


At Their Own Speed and Peril

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Series: A Word Here, An Act There [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: A Lot of Extrapolation from the Novel I Jedi, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Male Character, Did you ever hear the tragedy of darth plagueis the wise, Force-Sensitive Shmi Skywalker, Human Disaster Nejaa Halcyon, Intentionally Ignoring Everything from the Novel Jedi Trial, Jedi Training, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Multi, Obi-Wan Stuck Being the Only Adult in the Room, Polyamorous Character, Pre-Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, References to Michael Stackpole's X-Wing Novels, Shmi Backstory, The Adventures of Corran Horn's Stupid Jedi Grandfather
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2019-09-05 04:05:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: The Jedi Council granted Obi-Wan the rank of Jedi Knight after the Battle of Naboo, but deemed him too young to take sole responsibility for Anakin Skywalker. The only available solution was for a Jedi Master to supervise Obi-Wan and his Padawan until the Council decided that Obi-Wan was ready to assume those duties alone.Unfortunately, the only Jedi Master who volunteered was an impulsive, erratic, highly disruptive Corellian named Nejaa Halcyon. A Jedi who was extremely upset to learn that he had to stay on Coruscant from now on.Now, Obi-Wan is stuck trying to not only manage his nine-year-old Padawan but also rein in a fully-grown adult who seems to be doing everything in his power to get sent home to Corellia.And the Council thought thatObi-Wanwasn't mature enough…





	1. The Second Trial

**Author's Note:**

> _“The Halcyons were strong in the Force but not flashy or given to public displays of power. A word here, an act there, allowing people to choose between good or evil at their own speed and peril…”_ — Excerpt from _I, Jedi_ by Michael Stackpole
> 
>  _“I think I’ll put a wideview holoprojector right where you’re standing.”_ — Corran Horn, in the same novel, shortly before getting the shit kicked out of him by a ghost.

If there was one word to describe Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon, it would be _disruptive_. Certainly, when the situation called for it, he could be quite calm and serious, but staying idle was not one of his strengths, so it seemed as though he sometimes went out of his way to attract trouble.

Obi-Wan suspected that it was for this reason that he was so rarely on Coruscant. Corellian Jedi were notoriously quirky, keeping to their own system and having their own traditions and rituals, but Master Halcyon was stranger than most. He was excitable, talkative, and irritatingly nosy at times; however, he was also an extremely talented investigator, which gave him a little more slack with the High Council than he would have had otherwise.

He arrived on Naboo shortly after the battle with the Trade Federation was over. There were too many unanswered questions regarding the Sith that Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon encountered and it was beyond the ability of Naboo’s own investigators to handle. Obi-Wan had very few memories of the immediate aftermath of the duel that led to his master’s death, but he did remember Master Halcyon’s kindness and patience as Obi-Wan walked him through the events of that terrible day. He did his best to keep Obi-Wan shielded from the rest of the investigation, allowing him time to grieve and to make sure that Anakin was safe.

Master Halcyon accompanied them back to Coruscant so that he could make his report to the Jedi Council. On the way, Obi-Wan found himself growing jealous of the rapport that he established with Anakin, having a knack for talking to children that Obi-Wan himself did not yet possess. It was strange, Obi-Wan thought, that Halcyon did not have a Padawan and in fact had never had one. During his trips to Coruscant, he would lead workshops with some of the younger Jedi on how to use the Force to assist with observation and recall, and Obi-Wan remembered him as a very good teacher, but he had never shown any interest in taking on an apprentice.

An apprentice. Obi-Wan kept looking at Anakin and realizing that, once they arrived on Coruscant, he was going to have to somehow convince the Council to let him train the boy. He was still a Padawan himself; how was that even going to work?

* * *

Obi-Wan wasn’t surprised that the Council said no, but it still hurt. It had been Qui-Gon’s last request and Obi-Wan had promised him that he would train Anakin.

“Grant you the rank of Knight, we do,” Yoda said. “But allow you to train Skywalker, we will not.”

Anakin, for his part, did not want to be apprenticed to a total stranger, and was shockingly stubborn about it. The Council was at an impasse over whether to place Anakin into a group with the Initiates or whether to rescind his acceptance into the Order altogether.

“Meditate on this, we shall,” Yoda said. He almost sounded reassuring. “For now, tend to young Skywalker until a decision is made.”

Obi-Wan left the Council chambers broken-hearted. He had let Qui-Gon down. He had let Anakin down.

Leaning on the wall just outside the doors was Master Halcyon.

“Bad news, I see,” he said, looking sympathetic even though he was frowning. “They said no?”

Obi-Wan nodded. He felt wretched. “They said I was too young.”

“Weren’t they saying that Skywalker was too _old_ to train?” Halcyon asked. “I don’t know, maybe they could balance each other out or something.” He ran a hand through his dark goatee.

“They were resistant to the idea of him even joining the Order until Master Qui-Gon offered to train him. Now I don’t know what they are going to do with Anakin.” He was trying to keep his emotions in check but he felt twisted up in frustration and sadness and was fairly sure that it was obvious.

Halcyon continued scratching at his beard; Obi-Wan could almost see the calculations turning in his mind like gears, clicking back and around until, at last, he appeared to come to a decision.

He gave Obi-Wan a pat on the shoulder. “Let me see what I can do,” he said, with a smile that actually made Obi-Wan a little nervous.

Curious, Obi-Wan waited outside and listened through the doors as Halcyon made his report on the Naboo incident to the Council. Hearing it described in such a straightforward way was disorienting; it lacked the panic and terror and uncertainty that dominated Obi-Wan’s memories of the event. The Council asked a few clarifying questions, including a few about Obi-Wan himself.

“What is your opinion on Kenobi’s current state of mind?” Mace Windu asked.

Obi-Wan flushed with anger but Halcyon answered without any sign of judgment. “He’s grieving, there’s no doubt about that, but he’s handling it well. It would probably be a good idea to give him something to do, though. He spent almost all of his time with Qui-Gon before, and being here without him must be fairly painful. I’d suggest changing up his routine so he doesn’t have time to brood.”

“Seeing to young Skywalker at the moment, he is.” Yoda said.

“That’s a great plan,” Halcyon replied, keeping his voice casual. “I’ve watched them together; they make a good pair, which is even more impressive given what they’re both going through. Anakin’s had a pretty stressful few weeks and needs a familiar face around.” There was a pause, which finally ended with Halcyon’s exasperated sigh. “Come on, you know where I’m going with this.”

“Too young, Kenobi is, to have an apprentice,” Yoda said, a little sternly.

“We cannot bend the rules on this, Master Halcyon,” Depa Billaba added.

“I’m surprised someone appointed to the Council as young as you were would have so little faith in what a Jedi Knight is capable of, no matter the age, Master Billaba,” Halcyon said, a touch of amusement in his voice. “Kenobi is mature enough to handle it. Besides, if it’s a choice between that and losing Anakin altogether, I know what I’d pick.”

“A risk, young Skywalker is,” Yoda said. “Reckless with his training, we cannot be.”

“Better that he not be trained at all, than to be trained poorly,” Ki-Adi-Mundi said.

Obi-Wan couldn’t see it, but he pictured Halcyon crossing his arms over his chest. “Really,” he said drily, “you’d kick out the most powerful Force-sensitive you’ve found in centuries, all because of a rule.”

“Your objections are noted, Master Halcyon,” Mundi said. “But this is not the reason why you were summoned before the Council.”

“Furthermore, the Council has not rendered a final verdict on the matter of Skywalker’s training,” Windu said. His voice held a note of something that Obi-Wan couldn’t quite place… encouragement?

Halcyon paused for a moment. “What if Kenobi had help?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Mundi asked.

“I mean, what if someone helped him train Anakin until Kenobi earned the rank of Master? He’s a sharp kid, it can’t be too much longer now that he’s a Knight. There have got to be a few Masters around the Temple who could pitch in.”

“Are _you_ offering to be that Master?” Billaba asked, sounding a little stunned.

“Well, now that you mention it,” Halcyon said, obviously wearing that same smile he gave Obi-Wan before he entered the Council chambers, “I could probably make some room in my schedule.”

“Agree you would, to oversee Skywalker’s training?” Yoda asked.

Halcyon’s reply was solemn. “Yes.”

“And commit to this duty until Kenobi is granted the rank of Master, you will?”

“I will,” Halcyon said.

The Council appeared to take a moment to deliberate, their voices too quiet for Obi-Wan to overhear.

“Then settled, it is,” Yoda pronounced. “Deliver the good news to Kenobi and Skywalker, you may.”

“Thank you, Master Yoda,” Halcyon said.

“However,” Yoda added, almost as an afterthought, “until discharged this duty is, return to Corellia you will not.”

“ _What?”_ Halcyon cried in shock.

“An objection, do you have, Master Halcyon?”

There was a very tense moment, during which Halcyon appeared to be trying to rein in his temper. Then, as if through gritted teeth, he said, “No, Master Yoda.”

Halcyon exited the chamber so quickly that Obi-Wan was barely able to get out of his way before the door could hit him in the face. He was obviously very upset.

“Thank you, Master Halcyon,” Obi-Wan said, trying to keep up with the Jedi Master’s furious strides through the halls of the Temple.

“Well, congratulations, I guess,” Halcyon grumbled.

“Will you be moving into Master Qui-Gon’s quarters, then?” The idea made him vaguely uncomfortable.

“Not sure. I’ll figure something out. Go tell Anakin what’s going on.”

Obi-Wan went to find his new Padawan, unsure whether the news he was delivering was good or not.

* * *

The Order was able to find new permanent quarters for Halcyon in the Temple, with Obi-Wan and Anakin living nearby. Obi-Wan was relieved to be able to put off the unpleasant task of packing up Qui-Gon’s possessions for another day.

Obi-Wan and Anakin arrived at their new quarters in time to overhear Halcyon in the middle of a highly agitated conversation with Mace Windu.

“They just _had_ to twist the knife, didn’t they?” Halcyon snapped. “They couldn’t just let me walk away with a total win—they had to get that last little stab in at the end.”

“It’s not about winning,” Windu said. “Padawans stay at the Temple, you know that.”

“Not always,” Halcyon countered. “I could have taken them both with me to Corellia, trained Anakin there—”

“No, you _couldn’t_ , Nejaa.” Windu sounded almost as agitated as Halcyon. “Having a Padawan means more supervision from the Council. They’ve been willing to turn a blind eye until now, but if you take Anakin there, you’ll just be throwing it in the Council’s face and then they’ll _have_ to do something.”

“Well, I sure hope that Kenobi’s a prodigy, then,” Halcyon snarled, “because I’m not going to be stuck here for years when I could be back home with—”

“If you had just done what you were supposed to do—”

“If I had done what I was supposed to do, I would have been _miserable_ , Mace!”

“You _agreed_ to this, Nejaa! If you can’t stand it, then go tell the Council—”

“And tell them _what_ , exactly?” Halcyon was yelling now. “That the Chosen One is on his own now because I’ve spent the last decade breaking half of the rules of the Order?”

Anakin shot Obi-Wan a look of alarm. Obi-Wan shook his head. “It’s going to be all right, Anakin. I promise.” As for himself, he had no idea what was going on. Halcyon was strange, but what sort of rules could he have broken? And why had Master Windu kept silent about it to the rest of the Council?

“You knew that you couldn’t keep this up forever!” Windu yelled back. “What were you going to do in a few years, just show back up on Coruscant and claim that you—”

“I would have figured something out!” Halcyon sounded almost desperate.

“Well, figure something out _now_ , Nejaa,” Windu said. He sighed. “Think of this as your second set of Trials, all right? If you want to be a Jedi, then you have to decide to start acting like one.”

“I _am_ a Jedi,” Halcyon protested. “It’s just… Mace, this is going to take _years_. What am I supposed to tell them?”

“What you just told me: that you’re a Jedi. This task is more important.”

“Not to me,” Halcyon said, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Not to me.”

“Nejaa,” Windu said gently, “many things change over time, even here in the Order. But not this.”

“I don’t know if I can do this, Mace.”

“That’s why it’s called a Trial.”

Obi-Wan was able to get Anakin and himself out of sight before Windu left Halcyon’s quarters.

Anakin still looked worried. “Is Master Halcyon angry with us?”

“No,” Obi-Wan said. That much was true, at least. “But I think we should give him some space for the next few days.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure that no one would be reading this unless they were at least slightly familiar with the X-Wing novels by Michael Stackpole, because this character is obscure as hell, but if not: _let me tell you_ about Nejaa Halcyon.
> 
> So the main POV character in those novels is Corran Horn, who finds out partway through the series that his grandfather is actually his stepgrandfather. His biological grandfather was a Jedi named Nejaa Halcyon, who died during/slightly after the Clone Wars. When the Jedi Purge began, Nejaa's best friend Rostek Horn married Nejaa's widow Scerra and adopted and hid Corran's father Valin from the Inquisitors. Nejaa only appears "onscreen" during a dream-sequence kind of thing in the book _I, Jedi_ , but we hear some other things about him from Rostek and Valin in the same book. 
> 
> In the Legends canon as it stood before _The Phantom Menace_ came out, the idea of a Jedi having a wife and kid wasn't completely unheard of, but in this brave new post-prequel world that we live in, it's actually kind of a big deal, as you may remember from, er, everything in Episodes II and III. :)
> 
> A few years after the prequels were released but before the sequel trilogy relegated all of this to Legends continuity, there was this novel _Jedi Trial_ which sort of tried to reconcile some of this weirdness. The premise was like catnip for me—Nejaa mentors Anakin during the early days of the Clone Wars???—but I ultimately found it extremely disappointing because the author was much more interested in exploring the logistics of warfare (and a somewhat unnecessary romance sideplot between two OCs) than in exploring the relationship between two fairly unconventional Jedi. So I'm ignoring it for this fic.
> 
> Okay, so I said I was going to tell you about Nejaa Halcyon so _let's do this thing_.
> 
> As mentioned above, this guy had a wife and kid and managed to hide it from the Jedi for years which is pretty damn gutsy. So I imagine that his adherence to the rest of the Code might be a little... flexible.
> 
> Next up, he more or less stayed on Corellia the whole time, and was implied to be an unofficial member of the Corellian Security Force, where he partnered with Rostek Horn. _However,_ he apparently spent a _lot_ of that time putting on his Most Extra Jedi robes and running around the city's seediest district _intentionally trying to freak out criminals._ Dude was basically Jedi Batman and I am definitely here for the sort of person who thinks that this is a normal way to conduct themselves. Given Corran's somewhat insane behavior on Courkrus in _I, Jedi,_ I think it's fair to assume that there were some similarities there. Besides, writing a mature, reasonable Jedi is no fun. 
> 
> Finally, Nejaa's death in canon was _hardcore._ At the end of the Clone Wars, he went with two other Jedi (including someone heavily implied to be Obi-Wan) to shut down some Dark Side cult. Obviously, because this is Star Wars, a massive duel ensued, during which Nejaa was knocked down and disarmed. Here's the problem: Nejaa couldn't use telekinesis without a massive power boost and so he couldn't get his lightsaber back in time. _So then this fucking thing happens:_ Nejaa gets stabbed in the chest, drains the energy out of his opponent's lightsaber, uses the energy to power his TK, and then grabs the guy with telekinesis and _crushes him to death with the Force._ While _dying from a massive hole in his chest._
> 
> So there is obviously a lot of fun fanfic potential here, and I couldn't find a lot of it here on AO3, so I have to write it myself, I guess. 
> 
> Hold onto your hats, I have no idea where this fic is going _at all._


	2. Such a Pointless Rule

A Jedi did not know fear.

 _Panic_ , on the other hand…

Nejaa tried to keep his breathing under control. Trying to do the same with his emotions was a lost cause at this point.

He was going to be stuck here for _years._ That was the word that kept echoing in his head: years. Years until Obi-Wan was ready to have an apprentice without supervision. Years until he was allowed to leave. Years until he saw Corellia again.

Years until he saw his family again.

How was he going to tell them?

He thought that he had time to figure out a plan but all he was doing was putting off the inevitable: he wasn’t going to get everything that he wanted. That was the truth he had denied for so long, one so bitter that he could feel it on his tongue.

He curled his hands into fists. Took a deep breath.

He would do as he had always done: trust his instincts, listen to what the Force was trying to tell him, and remember who he was:

He was Nejaa Halcyon.

He exhaled, relaxed his hands, and keyed in the comm frequency for home.

He was a Jedi.

After a few seconds, the holodisplay came to life, showing him the familiar features of a dark-haired woman. “At last,” Scerra said, some undefined tension leaving her face. “What took you so long, love?”

He was a husband.

Nejaa couldn’t help giving a rueful laugh. “As usual, I found trouble.”

“You always do.” She turned away from the comm for a moment. “Valin’s in the other room, give me a moment—”

He was a father.

“Wait,” he interrupted. “Not just yet. I need…” He took another deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”

She turned back. The lines of worry returned to her face. “Should I get Rostek?”

He nodded. “Please.”

It took a few minutes to patch him in; Rostek was at work but fortunately not out on patrol. Nejaa gave a silent sigh of relief: it would be easier to tell them both at once.

He had done the unthinkable: broken the Jedi’s taboo on attachments and started a family. He hadn’t just fallen in love and gotten married: he had fallen in love and gotten married _twice_.

Granted, officially Scerra and Rostek were the only two who were married—there could be no written record of their marriage to Nejaa. According to the official registry, Rostek was Valin’s only father, even though the boy’s resemblance to Nejaa was obvious. The official story was that Nejaa was around Rostek all the time because Nejaa was a liaison to the Corellian Security Force and the two men partnered on patrols of Coronet City. Which was true—they _were_ partners on criminal investigations—but it went generally unremarked that they also went home together at the end of the night.

 _Officially_ , Nejaa did not have a family. In all other ways, all of the ways that mattered, he did.

Rostek Horn's face appeared, projected in the air alongside his wife's. As usual, he seemed so annoyingly _proper_ , both in looks and speech; it had been a joke since almost the day they met that, of the two of them, no one would have guessed that it was Nejaa who had had the “fancy Coruscant education,” as Rostek put it.

Rostek and Scerra had been friends since childhood, purely platonic until Nejaa's own personal brand of chaos and intensity had changed it into something more. The three of them fell recklessly in love almost overnight; reckless both in its speed and depth as well as in the fact that Nejaa was having to hide more and more of his whereabouts and activities from the Jedi Order. The stability they found with one another during those first few uncertain years was, aside from their son, the greatest thing they had ever created together.

Better to get to the point than to drag it out: “The Council has ordered me to stay on Coruscant.”

“For how long?” Scerra asked, her expression still apprehensive. Nejaa had been away from Corellia for extended periods before: weeks, sometimes months.

But never this long. “A long time. Years, they’re saying.”

Rostek’s eyes narrowed. “It isn’t because of us, is it?” he asked. Something about the way he asked it indicated that he knew that the answer was no.

Nejaa confirmed it. “No.” But as he said it, something occurred to him. “Though I suspect that it may have been taken into account.” Yoda was known to be sly like that. The old troll let him make his case for helping Obi-Wan and Anakin, to make an argument so strong that he wouldn’t be able to back out of it without having a very good reason, giving him enough synthrope to hang himself. A way of reining him in, of letting him know that his unacknowledged transgressions had not gone unnoticed. “I managed to find a new kind of trouble.”

If Scerra and Rostek had been in the same room, they likely would have exchanged a knowing look that Nejaa was all too familiar with; instead, they both gave him identical expressions of patience that had been tested nearly to its limit. “You always do,” Rostek sighed, unwittingly echoing Scerra’s words from earlier. “What happened?”

“One of the other Masters found a kid in the Outer Rim: he had been a slave all his life, completely untrained, but full of potential.” He found himself scratching at his beard again and forced his hand back down. “But he was too old, the Council said. They weren’t going to let him in, but the Master who found him argued that he would train him since his Padawan was almost ready to face the Trials.” He hadn’t known Qui-Gon Jinn very well, but knowing how hard he had fought to get Anakin out of the misery he had grown up in made Nejaa wish that he _had_ known him better. “Only, before he could start training him, that Master died. They made his Padawan a Knight, but wouldn’t let him train the kid and were even considering not letting him in the Order after all. So I kind of… stumbled into it.” He groaned. “I just didn’t know that it would mean staying _here_. I thought I could bring him home with me and train him with Valin.”

That part stung the most: in order to help Obi-Wan and Anakin, he wouldn’t be able to continue training his own son. It was too late now to bring Valin to the Order; he was eleven, even older than Anakin, and Nejaa wouldn’t be able to explain how he knew so much about the Force without explaining everything else. And if he did that, they would never let him near his son.

No attachments. Such a pointless rule.

“So I’m stuck here until they make Kenobi a Master and he can take sole responsibility. I’m…” He ran out of words other than: “I’m sorry.”

Instead of replying immediately, Scerra was staring off to the side, absentmindedly chewing on a fingernail while her mind went to work. While Rostek was skilled at finding the truth and Nejaa was good at coming up with ideas so outlandish that no one in their right mind would ever consider them, Scerra’s talent was in assembling solutions out of a chaotic array of possibilities.

“What _exactly_ did they tell you?” she asked at last. “Word for word?”

“ _Please_ don’t make me repeat it verbatim. Yoda said it and I’d have to do the voice and everything.” When Scerra answered him with a pointed look, he sighed. “ _Until discharged this duty is, return to Corellia you will not._ ”

“He wasn’t lying about doing the voice, apparently,” Rostek said drily.

“Aha!” Scerra said, triumphantly. “You aren’t stuck on Coruscant, my love. You just can’t come _here_.”

“That doesn’t help me much,” Nejaa pointed out. “Seeing as you all can’t exactly move to a new planet.” He looked at Rostek. “I know you love me, but I don’t really want to know whether you’d actually give up your career at CorSec for me.”

Rostek replied with a smile that was irritatingly enigmatic.

“What I was attempting to say,” Scerra continued, “is that, assuming this boy’s training is anything like yours was, there will likely be all sorts of missions and journeys off-planet to various _other_ exciting and interesting locales.” Her smile grew a little wicked. “And I’m sure no one will notice if you made a little side trip or two on your way back.”

“I think his apprentice might notice, dear,” Rostek said.

Her smile remained as it was before. “Well, what kind of Jedi Master would he be if he didn’t teach his Padawan some measure of discretion?”

Nejaa sighed. “At least I can make Obi-Wan look mature by comparison.”

“That’s the spirit,” Scerra said. Her smile faded but did not vanish entirely. “We’ll make this work.”

“We always do,” Rostek added. He winked. “Just don’t do anything to get your comm privileges revoked, all right?”

Nejaa snorted with laughter and felt a little better. They were right: they had made their very strange relationship work all these years, they could figure this out.

Still, it still ached knowing that the blue hue of the holo meant that he couldn’t see the grey of Rostek’s eyes or the copper highlights in Scerra’s hair. They were transparent images, nothing that he could touch or hold.

And they weren’t the only ones. “I should tell Valin now,” he said. The Force gave him a special bond with his son, letting them sense one another’s presence across distances, but even a Jedi Master couldn’t maintain that connection from halfway across the galaxy. At least, not that he knew of.

Scerra nodded. “I'll go get him.” She stood and left the range of the comm, leaving only a blue haze projected in the air.

He used the time to say goodbye to Rostek. “I miss you,” was all he could manage.

“And I you,” his husband said. “But I know that you'll be doing important work there, which is something of a comfort.”

Nejaa closed his eyes as he let out a breath, and opened them again. “I feel so far away.”

“Because you _are_ … but only physically. I know where your heart is.”

It was true; Nejaa could feel the pull of home tugging at him across the light-years.

“Some things last forever,” Rostek continued, “but your absence is not one of them.”

“I love you.” It was barely more than a whisper.

“Speaking of things that last forever,” Rostek said, his eyes shining a little brighter than they did a few moments before, “I love you too.”

As his part of the transmission ended, a dark-haired boy came into view on Scerra's side. He already looked older than he did when Nejaa last saw him, which had been mere weeks ago. How had that happened so quickly?

“What's wrong?” Valin demanded. He was a perceptive kid, Nejaa thought with a measure of pride, even though he doubted that Scerra had been trying to hide her emotions.

“Nothing's wrong, little one,” he said, “only different. I have to stay on Coruscant for awhile.”

His son might favor him in looks, but that shrewd expression was all Rostek. “It's going to be for a long time, isn't it?”

Nejaa let out a sigh. “Yes. There were some people here that needed help and I offered to help them. But in order to do that, I have to stay here for a long time. Possibly for a few years.”

Valin frowned at that. “Can you visit?”

“As soon as I can. But I promise to call, a lot… possibly so much that you'll start to get sick of me,” he teased. Valin rolled his eyes; already picking up those teenage mannerisms, Nejaa thought wryly. He _would_ be a teenager by the time Nejaa returned to Corellia for good. “You have to continue your lessons, after all.”

“It won't be the same over comm,” Valin protested.

“I know.” There was no getting around that part. “So you'll have to work even harder.” When Valin made a face, Nejaa added, “But you'll be a better Jedi for it in the end.”

“Easy isn't for Jedi,” Valin quoted something Nejaa had told him in the past; mostly as a joke, but the boy had taken it to heart in a way that was mildly worrying. He gave Nejaa another calculating look. “Can I come visit you?”

It was a terrible idea, Nejaa knew. Mace was already warning him about throwing the existence of his family in the collective faces of the Order; showing up with Valin was a whole order of magnitude more complicated. But he had always longed to show Valin the Temple where he grew up, to take him to all of the places he had told his son stories about, and, if he was being honest, to show off the boy's skills in comparison to other young Jedi. “I don't know if you can,” he admitted. “ _If_ you can, it won't be for a while.” Not until he came up with a good cover story, at least.

“I don't want to wait that long,” Valin said, impatience creeping into his voice.

“I know, little one,” he said softly. “But remember what I taught you about things that seemed so very big?”

“That size doesn't matter to the Force.”

“Exactly. And that isn't just about how big something is or how far away it is, it can also refer to time. A few years is like a few seconds in the Force; I'll be back home before you know it.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

Valin nodded, his expression changing into one so similar to Scerra's “thinking face” that Nejaa couldn't help smiling.

“Now,” he said, “why don't you get me caught up on what you've been up to since I was home?”

He talked with his son for a while longer, and then it was time to say goodbye.

“I love you very much, little one. May the Force be with you.”

“You too, papa,” Valin said quietly. He stepped away, leaving Nejaa and Scerra as the only two people left on the call.

She was trying to keep his spirits up. “I expect to hear news any day now that you've chased every criminal off Coruscant in the course of a single evening, you know.”

“It won't be the same doing it on my own, you know,” he said. “Or without those ridiculous robes I wear while terrorizing Treasure Ship Row.”

“Well, that will be the first thing I'm putting in a care package for you, then.”

“And some Whyren's Reserve. The markup on it here is almost offensive.”

“One bottle. No sharing with the Padawan.”

Nejaa laughed. “I'm not even sure that the _Knight_ could handle a glass of it.”

“I suspect that you will be a very unfortunate influence on him.”

He didn't feel especially cheery but bantering with his wife was helping a little. “I hope to at least teach them to think before making any decisions that would trap them in the Temple for the foreseeable future,” he sighed.

“Tell me,” Scerra said, “when you offered to help train that boy, what did you feel?”

“Like someone had to do something to help.”

“And now that you know what that means, do you regret it?”

Nejaa frowned. Even with all of the frustration he was feeling, at no point had he ever been tempted to just walk away. “It still feels like the right choice,” he admitted.

“Then make it count. Make it worth the years that you'll be away.” She cracked a smile. “Train the hell out of that kid.”

“I will,” he promised.

“I know you will.” She looked at something to her left side. It must have been a chrono, because she looked back at him and said, “Speaking of which, you should go get to work on that.”

“I think he's in bed. Well, the kid at least. Maybe Obi-Wan is still up.” He ran his fingers through his beard. “We could at least talk about what basic lessons Anakin is going to need in order to catch up to his age group.” He could feel his mind latch onto the challenge ahead, and started to get a little excited. He raised an eyebrow at Scerra. “That was a very effective distraction strategy.”

She smirked. “I know what you're like when you don't have something—or some _one_ —to keep you occupied.”

He did feel more relaxed. “I love you so much,” he said softly.

“I love you too, Nejaa,” she said, nearly as quiet. “Now go do what you do best.”

“Stumble into an endless series of catastrophes?”

“No,” she said. “Change things and make them better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was pretty relieved to see Nejaa/Scerra/Rostek as an existing tag on AO3, because I was pretty psyched to explore this relationship already and am glad to know that I wasn't the only one. Though I will admit that I initially considered it because I wanted to have Rostek as a major character but didn't want to have to constantly invent reasons for him to always be around when Nejaa calls/goes home. 
> 
> Not that I'm restricted by canon or anything, but there are a few things in Legends canon that could support a romantic relationship between Rostek and Nejaa anyway. The major one is that, in pre-1999 Legends canon, the Jedi would have known that Nejaa was married, and yet it's heavily implied that when Ylenic It'kla brought Nejaa's personal effects back to Corellia after his death, he brought them to _Rostek,_ which is kind of strange given that Nejaa has a wife and she would have been the obvious person to give them to. So what if Rostek was considered to be just as significant a life partner as Scerra was? 
> 
> The other thing is kind of logistics-related: given how quickly the Jedi Purge happened, the odds are pretty low that Rostek could hide Scerra and Valin's connection to Nejaa without anyone immediately noticing that something was amiss. But, given the prequel films' ban on Jedi having families, it's safe to assume that Nejaa was already hiding his relationship. And what better cover story than saying that Scerra is married to Rostek and that Valin is his biological son? I then had like a million feelings about the kinds of things that straight-passing bisexual couples experience and how Rostek, Scerra, and Valin survived the Purge is because they could "pass" as a "normal" family. 
> 
> It also gives Rostek's behavior in _I, Jedi_ much more depth and tragedy (and, if you've read, like, _anything else_ I've ever written here, you know that I love tragedy), and suggests a lot of very complicated emotions that might contribute to his not telling Corran everything about his family, even now. 
> 
> But the actual main reason why I'm writing Nejaa/Scerra/Rostek is that I think that it's absolutely sweet and I really needed to take a break from some of the other stuff I'm working on and write about people being in love and happy and getting through challenges together.


	3. Neither Calm Nor Quiet

Anakin Skywalker couldn’t really complain about the food or the clothes or the beds in the Jedi Temple, because they were definitely better than what he had on Tatooine (even though he missed his mother’s cooking), but the thing that he couldn’t quite get past was the silence. Even during the rare moments when the streets outside his home were relatively quiet, the sound of the winds and the sands whipping against the stone walls of Mos Espa was always there in the background, singing him to sleep like a lullaby.

Obi-Wan had been teaching him how to quiet his mind and meditate, and Anakin _was_ getting better at it, but the silence still bothered him in a way that felt like an itch just under his skin. It took him a long time to fall asleep at night.

Therefore, it meant that he was still awake when Master Halcyon showed up in his room. “Want to go for a walk?” the Jedi Master asked him without preamble.

Anakin nodded and went to find his shoes. “Grab the darkest cloak you can find,” Halcyon said. Anakin noticed that he was wearing a black cloak himself.

“How did you know I was awake?” Anakin asked.

“I could sense it through the Force,” Master Halcyon said. “You seemed restless, so I figured some physical exercise might make it easier to fall asleep afterwards.”

“Where are we going?”

Halcyon shrugged. “Around. It’s too quiet here. I prefer to be around other people sometimes.” He appeared to be examining Anakin more closely than before. “Don’t you?”

Anakin wondered if Master Halcyon was reading his mind, because that was exactly what he had been thinking himself. If he _was_ reading his mind, that was a little rude, but Anakin was still trying to get the hang of this place and was doing his best not to get anyone mad at him. He had almost not been allowed to join the Jedi Order, not until Master Qui-Gon and Master Obi-Wan and then Master Halcyon had all stepped in and argued that he should even though he was too old, which felt silly because most of the time he was too _young_ for things. But the main point was that he couldn't afford to make any of them upset or else they might make him leave.

He was pretty sure a couple days ago that he had made Master Halcyon mad, because he definitely _sounded_ mad, but Master Obi-Wan kept reassuring Anakin that it wasn't because of him. It took a few more questions before Obi-Wan told him that Master Halcyon was actually angry at the Jedi Council, which Anakin could understand even though he wouldn't admit it out loud. When Master Qui-Gon first brought him in front of the Council, they all acted like Anakin had done something wrong even though he never _asked_ to come here in the first place. And then Master Yoda asked him a bunch of questions and apparently Anakin hadn't answered correctly even though they were all questions about _him_ and he had answered honestly. So he could see why Master Halcyon would be frustrated with them too.

Anakin found a cloak that he had thrown into a corner under a pile of other robes. He thought guiltily that maybe he should have kept his room cleaner—his mother would have liked that—but no one had ordered him to clean it or even commented on it, so maybe it wasn't a big deal.

He didn't really know what things here were big deals and what things weren't. He had to keep asking Obi-Wan and he was sure that he was probably being annoying. At least here no one was hitting him if he did something wrong.

He followed Master Halcyon through the silent halls of the Temple. He wondered if he should say something but decided that if he was supposed to say something Master Halcyon would let him know.

As they stepped out into the night air, Anakin fought back a shiver. Coruscant wasn't _cold_ , not exactly, but back in Mos Espa the sandstone held onto the heat of the twin suns so that they radiated warmth even at night. He pulled his cloak a little tighter around himself.

They left the quieter area of the city near the Jedi Temple and gradually the streets filled with people to the point that Anakin practically had to shove his way through the crowds.

“I thought you might miss being in a city,” Master Halcyon said as they walked. “I know I do. Quiet and solitude are fine if you need to meditate or concentrate on something, but it’s _life_ that creates the Force. All those people, all that activity, all that energy—that’s the Force. It’s good to be out in the midst of it, feeling it moving around you, feeling connected to the world.” He looked down at Anakin as they sidestepped a pair of arguing Sullustans. “What are you sensing now?”

“I don’t know,” Anakin had to practically yell up at him over the noises of the street. “I guess I need to concentrate for a second.”

“Touch the Force first,” Halcyon said, “then concentrate. It doesn’t have to be precise, just open up and let the Force move through you.”

Opening up was hard. Keeping himself to himself was what kept him from feeling things too intensely, because the world was intense all the time and had been _too much_ to handle in a place like Mos Espa. It was like a shield, one that he only let a select few past: his mother, Kitster, Padme.

“On the ship back from Naboo,” Halcyon said, “you told me that you won a podrace, right?”

Anakin nodded, then realized that Master Halcyon was looking ahead on where he was going and probably didn’t see it, so he said, “Yeah, I did.” He felt a rush of pride. “I was the only human who could race. It was because of the Force, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. So, when you’re racing, it’s not quiet or calm, is it?”

“No.” It was loud and exciting and terrifying in the best possible way. Feeling his heart race and his skin sting when grains of sand struck him, and the way that his hands steered the podracer without him even thinking about it.

“So think of it that way: all this?” Halcyon swept a hand out, nearly hitting a passing Bothan in the face. “It’s velocity. The Force racing through you. All you have to do is take a deep breath, hang on, and steer.”

Anakin inhaled and, as he took his next step, he imagined that he was flying forward at a hundred kilometers a second. The people around him were grains of sand, floating, shifting, twisting in the air as he accelerated. He exhaled and could feel a rush of energy whip past him like wind. The Force was not calm or quiet, but within that supersonic blast he could feel himself moving automatically, both his body and his mind, flying over the sands and feeling almost in a trance. Every motion was perfect, exactly where he was supposed to be, noticing everything around him. Half of him felt like an observer but the other half of him felt like he was part of it, every person around him a tiny part of himself, moving exactly where they were supposed to go.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, kid,” Master Halcyon said, “you’re going to start a Life Day parade if you keep doing that.”

It was only then that Anakin realized he had his eyes closed the entire time. Opening them, he saw that there were only a few people moving in the opposite direction towards him; most people had turned and were following him down the street, some making a complete one-eighty from their original path. Anakin froze and would have stayed rooted to the spot if Master Halcyon hadn’t kept his grip on his shoulder and steered him off of the main walkway. The crowd gradually returned to its usual traffic pattern.

He wasn’t sure if he felt horrified or just confused. “What did I do?”

Master Halcyon, unexpectedly, smirked. “Well, the good news is that you _really_ opened yourself up to the Force.”

“Is there bad news?” Anakin asked nervously.

The smirk faded but did not entirely vanish. “Not exactly. When you reached out, you touched the minds of those around you. The thing is, you also inadvertently planted a suggestion in their heads.”

“A mind trick.” Anakin remembered Master Qui-Gon attempting to use one on Watto, unsuccessfully, when they first met.

“Precisely. And I’ve got to say, that was pretty impressive for a first try, especially since you weren’t doing it intentionally, but that also means that you’re going to need to work on controlling that sort of thing.” His smile broadened into a wide grin, one that contained more than a little mischief. “Fortunately, you’re talking with someone who is particularly talented in that area. In fact,” he looked around, attempting to get his bearings, “I’ve got an idea on where to go next. Come on.”

They walked through a twisting maze of alleys. “On the way, practice opening yourself to the Force but tempering the connection. Don’t lose yourself entirely,” Master Halcyon said as they made their way towards a lift.

Ascending two levels, they arrived in an area of the city full of dull, lightless towers. There were fewer people, too. “Where are we going?” Anakin asked.

“Remember how I told you to wear a dark cloak?” Halcyon replied.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s because it’s night and they’ll help us blend in.”

“Why do we need to blend in?”

“Because we’re about to do something a little legally dubious. This way.” They walked around to the area between the buildings that contained rubbish disposal, loading docks, and other things not normally seen by the public. Oddly enough, this was the most like Mos Espa that Anakin had encountered so far on Coruscant.

Apparently he looked as doubtful as he felt. “Don’t worry,” Master Halcyon reassured him, “all we’re doing is trespassing.”

They approached a back door that was flanked by two guards in grey uniforms. Anakin wondered if he should look for somewhere to hide, but Master Halcyon went right up to them, grinning. “Hi there!” he said cheerfully. “Mind keying open the door for us?”

The guards barely seemed to notice him and they certainly didn't seem to notice Anakin; their eyes looked a little glazed over. A mind trick, then.

Now inside the building and moving through the empty featureless halls, Anakin frowned. “Aren't they going to snap out of it and come after us?”

“That's the beauty of it,” Master Halcyon said. “They won't remember it. The ten seconds that they saw us aren't there anymore.”

“You erased their memory?”

“I did. I try not to do it too often; there's a danger of tapping into the Dark Side when messing with the minds of others.” He flashed Anakin a smile. “Frivolous tricks, on the other hand…”

Anakin had heard people talk about the Dark Side but no one had explained it to him. He wasn't sure how to ask anyone about it, even Obi-Wan, because it sounded like a bad thing and he didn't want anyone to think he was interested in something like that.

They rode the lift up to the very top of the building, then found a set of stairs that led up to the roof. It was surprisingly quiet up there, though the air around them was full of ships and walkways crowded with people.

They stood in silence for a time. Anakin looked out at the city and tried to control his access to the Force; now that he had opened up he was having trouble closing it again.

He couldn't tell what Master Halcyon was thinking, though some part of his mind pointed out that he _could_ find out if he wanted to. The Force was giving him access to all sorts of things and he wasn't sure if he liked it.

Master Halcyon had brought it up and also seemed to be in a good mood to answer questions, so Anakin decided to speak up: “What's the Dark Side?”

The Jedi Master looked almost amused. “I guess I shouldn't be surprised they didn't include that in your first couple of lessons. They don't like talking about it.” He folded his arms under his cloak and looked out at the skyline. “The Force has two sides: the Light and the Dark. The Light Side is what the Jedi use, it's what you're being taught. The reason why they keep telling you to be calm is because it helps you think more clearly. You don't get as overwhelmed by negative emotions.” He gave Anakin a brief look to make sure he was still listening, then continued. “The Dark Side is powered by anger and hate. It's selfish, cruel, hurtful… basically, it's every jerk you ever met on Tatooine. And, like most jerks, it spreads, it corrupts, and it makes everything around it worse.”

Anakin looked down at his feet. He didn't want to remember those parts of home: being hurt, treated like nothing, by people like Watto or Sebulba, or any number of other people who looked at him and his mother and sneered _slave_ at them.

“I want to tell you something,” Master Halcyon said abruptly, jarring Anakin out of his thoughts. “I know you spent your life until now having to obey orders, never getting to say no… so I want you to know: you can always say no to me. No matter what.” He made a noise that was almost a laugh. “It's kind of awful that they call us Masters, you know?” He exhaled sharply in what sounded like frustration, though Anakin couldn’t tell who or what he was frustrated with. “I'm not your Master, not like that. You can say no to whatever I tell you. But I want to make a deal with you: _you_ don't have to do a damn thing I say unless you choose to, and _I_ promise that I'll never tell you to do something without a good reason. Okay?”

Anakin took a moment to think that over. It didn't seem like it had a downside, not for him at any rate. He just wasn't sure if he believed it.

But maybe he didn't have to say anything right away. He decided to wait and see if Master Halcyon demanded that he answer.

“Do you want to sit up here some more, or do you want to head back?” he asked Anakin. Anakin tried to figure out what answer he was expecting and was confused that he didn't seem to be leaning toward either response.

It was like he actually wanted to know what Anakin wanted.

So what _did_ he want?

He realized he was still shivering. “I want to go back.”

After they passed the guards on their way out (with Master Halcyon waving goodbye as their eyes glazed over again), Anakin answered the question he had been asked up on the roof: “It’s a deal.”


	4. Every Jedi Has Their Strengths

Obi-Wan still felt like he had no idea what he was doing. He was tempted to just admit this to Anakin, but decided that his apprentice didn’t need _more_ uncertainty in his life. It was important to appear stable, reassuring, and calm.

All of which were things that Master Halcyon was _not_. The man barely sat down, preferring to pace around the room, and seemed to be in a personal one-man contest to touch _everything_ , often picking up items and putting them down in other parts of the room. When he _was_ able to sit down, he tended to fidget with whatever was close at hand and, lacking that, running his fingers through his beard.

How was this man a Jedi Master? Obi-Wan had seen more focus and concentration in younglings.

The main problem was that Master Halcyon kept _interrupting_ him when he was trying to teach Anakin. It may not have been disruptive for Anakin himself, but Obi-Wan was driven to distraction and kept losing his train of thought. It was beginning to get extremely irritating, and once or twice Obi-Wan was tempted to use the Force to flick the older man’s ear.

The other problem, which Obi-Wan wasn’t even sure was a problem exactly, was that Halcyon kept encouraging Anakin to talk about Tatooine. Anakin didn’t seem overly eager to do so, but he didn’t seem unwilling either, and Halcyon kept coming up with ways to tie those details into lessons about the Force. Obi-Wan knew that Halcyon meant well, but something about the whole thing made him uncomfortable.

At first, he thought that it was because of the Order’s discouragement of attachments, that reminding Anakin of what he had left behind when he came to Coruscant would keep him from focusing on the here and now. But the more he thought about it, the closer he came to a realization that he had been trying to ignore since the day he met Anakin:

Anakin’s mother was still on Tatooine. She was still a slave.

And the Jedi had done nothing about that.

The thought made Obi-Wan increasingly queasy.

He wanted to bring it up to the Council but they were already so touchy on the subject of Anakin Skywalker that Obi-Wan wasn’t sure if he would make things better or make them worse.

Well, there was at least one person he knew that didn’t seem especially nervous around the Council. And they needed to have words with one another anyway.

Anakin finally had enough private instruction that he was able to join some of the older Initiates in exercises like the basics of lightsaber training and other physical conditioning. Obi-Wan took the opportunity to… well, he wouldn’t call it _cornering_ , but it did take more than a few maneuvers to keep Master Halcyon in a single room long enough to start a conversation.

He attempted to be diplomatic: “I’m wondering if it has perhaps become unclear who is covering which aspects of Anakin’s training.”

“Why?” Master Halcyon seemed confused. “Are we missing something?”

“No,” Obi-Wan said, trying desperately to not sound condescending, “only that I'm apparently not explaining things to your satisfaction.” When Master Halcyon raised his eyebrows in what appeared to be amusement, Obi-Wan decided to be more direct: “You keep interrupting me.”

“Oh, am I?” The Jedi Master looked honestly surprised. He stroked his beard. “Never heard that before.”

Obi-Wan doubted that very much.

“I personally do not mind,” he said uncomfortably, feeling as though he wasn’t being entirely truthful, “but it runs the risk of being disruptive to Anakin.”

Master Halcyon gave him a smile that indicated that he knew what Obi-Wan’s true objections were. “Fair enough. I can leave the two of you alone during those periods. Or not. It's your call.”

“Is it?” Obi-Wan said, more sharply than he intended. “I'm supposed to defer to you as the Master but I don't know what it is that you're expecting me to do.”

“Do you want a lesson plan or something?”

“I want _structure_ ,” he snapped. “I know that you don't want to be here and that you would rather be back on Corellia but at the very least you could stop _undermining_ me all the time.”

Master Halcyon's face froze for a brief second; a distant part of Obi-Wan's mind noted that this was the stillest he had ever seen the man. Then his features shifted into a half-smile, one a little too knowing for Obi-Wan's comfort. “You're afraid that I'm taking him away from you.”

“No,” Obi-Wan protested, though he wasn't entirely sure if that was the case. For all of his belief that attachments were distracting at best and toxic at worst, he _did_ secretly want Anakin to not just trust him, but _like_ him. Anakin liked Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan knew that he couldn't possibly take his late Master's place, much less do better than he would have done had he lived.

Maybe the Council was right that Obi-Wan shouldn't train him. Maybe he would be better off with another Master.

Though if the alternative was being apprenticed to Master Halcyon alone…

“The first time Anakin heard me call Qui-Gon Jinn “Master,” I thought he was going to run away. I'm still not sure that he won't, one of these days.” Obi-Wan reached for the spot where he until recently had his Padawan braid, then awkwardly put his hand back down at his side. “I feel like I'm walking through a field of detonators. Any misstep and I—the whole Order loses the Chosen One.”

“Do you know what that means, him being the Chosen One?”

Obi-Wan sighed. “I don't,” he admitted.

“Me either. But even if he wasn't, I don't know if a standard Jedi curriculum is going to work with him. His life has been radically different from ours.” Halcyon frowned. “That's why I keep asking him about Tatooine, by the way: I'm trying to get an idea of what he knows, how he thinks, how he learns.”

“His mother is still there,” Obi-Wan blurted out.

“Yeah, I know.”

“But did you know that she's still owned by that horrible Toydarian?” he demanded.

Halcyon froze again, his thoughts arresting so drastically that it almost felt like the air in the room came to a sudden stop. “What?” he asked softly.

“Master Qui-Gon tried to free her along with Anakin, but Watto refused to let her go. And then… well, Queen Amidala needed to get to Coruscant, and Anakin…”

“Anakin was more important,” Halcyon finished. His fidgeting was long gone. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Does the Council know?”

It made Obi-Wan's stomach sour, but he said what he knew to be true: “They must know. But they haven't done anything.”

He might as well admit it to himself: he was angry. And he wasn't the only one.

“Well, if they didn't already regret making me stay on Coruscant, they're definitely about to,” Halcyon growled. He caught Obi-Wan's eye and gave him a grin that would likely spell trouble for the next Council member he encountered. “Feel like raising a little hell?”

Obi-Wan knew that he should say no. He should absolutely say no. For all he knew, this was part of a plan by Master Halcyon to get himself exiled back to Corellia. He had privileges with the Order that Obi-Wan did not possess. Given everything he had seen and everything that he had heard about the man, this could backfire terribly.

But he was still angry and felt like he needed to do _something_.

The memory of Master Qui-Gon’s death, while Obi-Wan watched helplessly from behind an energy shield, momentarily overwhelmed his thoughts.

He needed to do something.

He couldn’t banish his skepticism entirely, though. “Explain what you mean by ‘raising hell’?” he asked Master Halcyon.

* * *

They took turns lurking around the entrance to the Council chambers. Halcyon spent his shifts being as disruptive as possible without actually barging into the room: wandering around tapping absentmindedly on the walls, humming to himself, even leaning on the door once or twice.

For their part, the Council seemed more than content to ignore them as deliberately as possible. They entered and exited the room without acknowledging either Halcyon or Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan started bringing Anakin with him and running him through training exercises right outside the door. Anakin knew that _something_ was going on, but all Master Halcyon would tell him was that it was a scheduling matter and he should make the most of the opportunity. Anakin's expression clearly showed that he was skeptical about the value of this “opportunity.”

On this particular day, both Obi-Wan and Halcyon were seated on the floor outside the Council chambers with Anakin. Obi-Wan had brought some of the toys they gave to younglings to practice their telekinesis skills. Master Halcyon was playing with one off by himself, a transparent cube containing a series of hoops and tiny metal balls. When the balls were levitated into the hoops, it would complete a circuit that would emit a light from the center of the cube. Instead of doing _that_ , however, Halcyon was tossing the cube from hand to hand, causing the pieces inside to rattle in a way that was quickly getting on Obi-Wan's nerves.

Eventually, he used the Force to yank the toy out of the Jedi Master's hand and set it down at his side. Halcyon made a disappointed sound bordering on a whine.

“Why don't you show Anakin how that device is _supposed_ to work?” Obi-Wan said testily. He held it out in his hand and waited for Master Halcyon to levitate it back into range. Instead, the Jedi Master stood, walked over to where the other two were sitting, and grabbed the toy out of Obi-Wan's hand.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes as Halcyon sat and resumed his fiddling with the cube. “I'm sure Anakin would be interested in seeing it,” he prompted.

Halcyon shrugged. “I bet he could build a better version himself.”

“How _does_ it work?” Anakin asked. His telekinesis skills were progressing, but Obi-Wan knew that he could use some improvement on his fine control. “I want to see.”

Halcyon looked uncomfortable. “Kenobi's going to have to show you instead.” He tossed the cube to Obi-Wan.

“Why?” Anakin asked.

“Every Jedi has their strengths,” Halcyon said. “Telekinesis isn't one of mine.”

“You can't move things with the Force?” Anakin asked, a little incredulous.

“Can't even move the dust covering that pile of robes and debris you call a bedroom,” he said.

Anakin knew he was being teased and scowled. “Why, though?”

“Why anything? Will of the Force, I guess.” He shrugged. “Not everyone is a prodigy.”

Obi-Wan noticed a growing note of ‘ _drop it_ ’ in Master Halcyon's tone. He knew that people had certain strengths and weaknesses in their Force abilities, but it typically wasn't so drastic as to be completely _unable_ to do something as basic as telekinesis.

And given how much that skill was emphasized in Jedi training… Obi-Wan winced. He had assumed that Halcyon just wasn't the sort who was particularly flashy with their powers, despite the man's tendency to be flashy about everything else. He hadn't realized that Halcyon's talents were, well, deficient in that area.

Before he could get a better read on the situation, the door to the Council chambers opened, revealing a fairly peeved Mace Windu, who glared down at the three of them without saying a word.

“You refused to let me make an appointment for an audience with the Council,” Halcyon pointed out before Windu could speak.

“Because I saw what you wanted to talk to us about, and that particular matter is closed,” Windu said.

“Just five minutes, Master Windu,” Halcyon said, getting to his feet. “I'm sure the Council can spare that.”

After a tense silence, Windu finally sighed. “Fine. Five minutes.”

Halcyon cocked his head towards Obi-Wan. “Come on.”

Obi-Wan and Anakin both stood up, but Windu shook his head at Anakin. “Skywalker stays out here.”

Master Halcyon gave Anakin a wink and gestured at the toys on the floor. “Ten credits says you can’t combine a few of those into something more exciting.” Anakin actually scoffed at that. Obi-Wan mostly hoped that Anakin wouldn’t listen at the door, though even _he_ hadn’t been able to resist the temptation.

After they were standing before the Council, Master Yoda gave them a tired look. “Persistent you have been, Master Halcyon, in seeking an audience with the Council.”

“It was a matter of some urgency, Master Yoda,” Halcyon said. “The longer we delay, the less likely we are to acquire the information we seek.”

“And what matter would that be?” Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.

Halcyon kept a pleasant smile on his face. “During the time I have spent here with Kenobi, I was able to hear more about the incident that the Naboo delegation had on Tatooine. There are a few discrepancies related to a series of transactions between Master Qui-Gon Jinn and several of the local merchants in Mos Espa, discrepancies that may be an eventual liability for the Order if any of them choose to sue for financial damages. I request permission to reopen the investigation and conduct follow-up interviews with the individuals involved.” He glanced at Obi-Wan. “Kenobi can, of course, corroborate all of this.”

“It is true,” Obi-Wan spoke up. He hadn’t been entirely thrilled with Master Halcyon’s idea, as it did involve some implicit criticism of Master Qui-Gon’s actions in what was a fairly hazardous situation, but Halcyon had reassured him that, given what he knew, it was nearly impossible for this plan to cast Qui-Gon in a negative light. “Given the urgency of Queen Amidala’s mission, not to mention the attack by the Sith on Tatooine, there were some gaps in Master Qui-Gon’s recounting of his time in Mos Espa, particularly the methods by which he was able to raise enough credits to purchase the parts that the ship required. I know that some form of gambling was involved, but he was not forthcoming with the details of where the credits to place the wager came from.”

“Master Qui-Gon made his report to the Council upon his return to Coruscant,” Depa Billaba pointed out.

“This is true, Master Billaba,” Obi-Wan answered, “but there were pieces of information that he had told me that he did not include in his report, and I think there may have been more that he omitted on top of that. The matter of Anakin Skywalker took precedence over a complete recounting of our time on Tatooine.”

“And since Qui-Gon isn’t able to speak for himself, we’ll need to get any supplemental information from the people he encountered in Mos Espa,” Halcyon concluded.

Mace Windu actually rolled his eyes. “We’re not sending you to Tatooine, Master Halcyon.”

“The Council’s inquiry is closed,” Mundi said. “There is no need to expend additional resources on something this trivial.”

“Take it out of my salary,” Halcyon said. He frowned. “Do I get a salary? I was never clear on whether the credits I got were meant for room and board on Corellia. Of course, I could just—”

“Master Halcyon,” Mundi interrupted. “Your primary duties are to assist Kenobi with Skywalker’s training. Sending you all the way to the Outer Rim would distract you from those duties.”

“Distractions enough, you seem to have,” Yoda said.

Obi-Wan blinked. Did Master Yoda just make a _joke_?

Halcyon appeared to be holding back a snort of laughter, at least. “Understood,” he said, inclining his head. “Perhaps interviews over the HoloNet, then?” They had expected the Council to deny that first request anyway.

Windu narrowed his eyes. “Who exactly are you intending to interview?”

“Not very many individuals,” Halcyon said. “The Toydarian merchant Watto, one of the local bookies, a woman named Shmi Skywalker—”

“Is that really necessary?” Billaba asked.

“Well,” Halcyon said, attempting to sound casual, “I suppose we could just limit the interviews to Ms. Skywalker…”

“That is neither necessary nor possible,” Mundi said. Obi-Wan noticed that the mood in the Council chambers was beginning to shift into something grimmer than before.

“Not possible?” Halcyon asked, sounding surprised. “Why not?”

“This is obviously not about the inquiry, Master Halcyon,” Windu said, sounding a little snappish. “What are you actually trying to do?”

The smile that had been on Halcyon’s face was now gone. “I’m trying to get you to admit it,” he said. “You knew that his mother was still enslaved and you’re all just content to ignore it.”

A tense silence filled the room.

“Before you say anything,” Halcyon said quietly, “remember that he’s probably listening at the door.”

The silence stretched out to an uncomfortable length, during which Obi-Wan fought the urge to fidget. Being around Master Halcyon had given him some bad habits, apparently.

Finally, it was Master Yoda who spoke: “Perceptive you are, Master Halcyon. Insight into much that is overlooked, the Force has given you, and benefit from that, we all do. Guardians of peace and justice, the Jedi are, and live up to that calling we must. Too often focused on the affairs of the galaxy we are.” He gave the Council an expression that bordered on reproving. “Saving a single person, justice also can be.”

Master Halcyon looked on the verge of… well, _squeeing_.

Yoda looked over at Windu. “Travel to Tatooine, Master Windu will, and arrange for her emancipation.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary,” Halcyon said, “I can take care of that.”

Yoda made a sound that may have been a laugh. “Along the Corellian Run hyperspace lane, Tatooine is, yes?”

Halcyon tried and failed to look innocent. “Well, now that you mention it…”

“Then spare you this temptation, Master Windu shall.”

When Halcyon attempted to protest, Windu rolled his eyes again. “Take the win, Nejaa, and don’t push it.”

“Fine,” Halcyon sighed. He then addressed the Council at large: “I thank you, Masters, for your time and consideration in this matter. I’m sure Anakin will be very pleased.”

“I’m certain he already is,” Windu said wryly. He raised his voice. “Skywalker, I would recommend taking a few steps back, unless you want to get hit in the head by the door when Kenobi and Halcyon leave.”

Obi-Wan sensed his apprentice’s surprise through the Force. Right underneath it, though, was a wave of utter happiness.


	5. Time Without Mercy

He had managed to help Anakin, which was the most important part.

That said, Nejaa would be lying if he said that he wasn’t disappointed that he couldn’t get off-planet. The Council had seen right through _that_ ploy.

Nothing to do but wait for the next opportunity.

He hated waiting.

Calls back to Corellia weren't nearly enough to satisfy him. Time was passing without mercy and Valin was looking older with every passing day and Nejaa felt the absence of his family like a missing limb.

He needed to burn off some of this excess energy before he exploded.

Fortunately for him (and unfortunately for everyone else), there was no such thing as a city without crime.

Time to go hunting.

This was how he and Rostek first met, in fact: Nejaa kept interfering in CorSec investigations in the seedier areas of Coronet City, in particular with Rostek's attempted infiltration of a spice kingpin's syndicate. Rostek would try and arrange a sting and then Nejaa would show up with his lightsaber and Jedi robes and ruin the whole thing, driving the dealers even further underground. After a particularly disastrous incident, Nejaa saved Rostek's life and was rewarded by being immediately arrested by the CorSec officer.

This went on for almost two months before Rostek dragged him back to One CorSec Plaza and nearly hit him over the head with a datapad containing the complete Corellian Security Force Legal Rights and Regulations manual.

“If you're going to pretend you're a law enforcement officer, you could at least try to understand the actual _law_ first,” he growled at Nejaa before tossing him in a detention cell for the night.

To his credit, by the time they let him out, Nejaa had read the whole thing.

“Is there some kind of place where you can learn more about this stuff?” he asked Rostek, who responded with a look of utter bafflement over the realization that an adult was actually this clueless.

Rostek apparently spent the next several months trying to decide if he was more nervous about Nejaa destroying his career and possibly the city, or about his increasingly inconvenient crush on this green-eyed Jedi Knight who never seemed to sit still.

It worked out all right in the end.

It was too bad that Nejaa didn’t have the amazingly garish Jedi robes that Scerra made him for these little adventures. Often just the act of him showing up in those things was enough to bring a hostile situation to a sudden (usually nonviolent) end. But no matter where he was, he always had his lightsaber, and that seemed to convey the message just as clearly.

Furthermore, just like on Corellia, he didn’t have to do this alone.

“Feel like another walk tonight?” he asked Anakin after dinner. Mace Windu had left for Tatooine that afternoon and Nejaa knew that Anakin was probably going to need a good distraction to keep from becoming too anxious.

“Can Obi-Wan come?” he asked.

“Of course,” Nejaa said. He had actually assumed that it wouldn’t be something Obi-Wan would be interested in: calm and routine seemed to be more the Knight’s speed, but Nejaa also knew that Obi-Wan was a lot more insecure about his relationship with Anakin than he let on. Leaving him out of things wouldn’t help matters.

“Remember those observation and recall workshops I used to teach?” he asked Obi-Wan shortly after that. “I was thinking we could take Anakin out for some hands-on lessons, so to speak.”

Obi-Wan had also noticed Anakin’s growing anxiety about his mother, and agreed.

* * *

“Three Quarren and a Duro,” Anakin answered.

“And what was the first Quarren holding? The leftmost one?” Nejaa asked as they passed the tapcafe.

Anakin frowned. “Some kind of bag… a toolkit or something?”

“Close enough. How about the Duro?”

“A comlink,” he replied after a moment.

“Try again,” Nejaa said.

Anakin’s frown deepened for a moment, then he gave Nejaa an exasperated glare. “He wasn’t holding anything!”

Nejaa grinned and resisted the urge to ruffle the boy’s hair. He wasn’t Valin. It wasn’t the same.

“Test Obi-Wan next,” Anakin said, still a little grumpy.

“All right, then. Let’s do a demonstration of emotional observation: Obi-Wan, tell me about those two Togruta we passed outside the tapcafe.”

“Oh, er…” Obi-Wan looked a little embarrassed. “I hadn’t expected that I would be taking part in this.”

“Don’t worry,” Nejaa said, “the Force can help sharpen memories even for things that you were only picking up subconsciously. It’s the same principle as conscious observations.”

Obi-Wan nodded and took a moment to concentrate. “They’re wondering about my…” Then he looked even more embarrassed, to the point of blushing. “Oh. Oh dear.”

Nejaa started laughing. “I thought it was very complimentary.”

“What was it?” Anakin asked, suddenly very interested in what was making his master so utterly mortified.

“ _Never mind_ ,” Obi-Wan said, increasing his pace.

Anakin got a look on his face that Nejaa was beginning to recognize as the one the young man got when he was trying to concentrate on something he was sensing in the Force. “But what were they—” His eyes widened. “Something’s wrong.”

Nejaa stretched out with his senses and caught what Anakin was referring to. It was far off, possibly the next level down: the acrid scent of danger and murderous intent, accompanied by the shuddering sensation of fear. Violence was imminent.

“Stay with Obi-Wan,” he instructed Anakin, and made his way to the nearest transfer point between the levels. Too crowded, he realized. Well, he was going to have to do something ridiculous eventually tonight; he might as well start with a several-story plummet from a city block. One side of the lifts were out in the open air, their transparisteel walls facing out into the lanes of speeder traffic beyond the walkways. Fortunately, the walls weren’t completely featureless: they had steel tension cables running down the sides. Perfect.

Sometimes being a Jedi meant taking time to think, meditating on all available options, and calling on the Force for wisdom and guidance.

Other times it meant trusting your instincts and hoping that you react quickly enough to the situation that you don’t die in an incredibly stupid way.

Ways such as leaping off a suspended walkway in the middle of the night without any guarantee of where he would land.

His hands found the steel cables and used them to slow the speed of his descent enough to shift his body around to face the interior of the city levels.

Ignoring his scraped palms, Nejaa swung his legs back and then, using the momentum from that motion, he jumped back in the direction of the next level down…

...and landed in the middle of what was about five seconds away from becoming a speeder bike gang brawl.

Maybe more like ten seconds, he corrected himself, because everyone was now looking at him instead of each other.

Tonight's trip was ostensibly meant to be a lesson on observation and recall. Those skills were going to come in handy.

In addition to the bikers, he could see a ring of civilians clustered in knots around the edges of the block. They were the source of the fear he had sensed earlier. The doorways and windows of the surrounding buildings—small businesses, mostly—had been smashed in and debris was visible inside. There were piles of what appeared to be stock from the stores lying out in front of the buildings.

The bikers were wearing two different styles of outfits: one with red stylized wings on the seams of their jacket sleeves, the other with silver slashes across the front and back of their jackets. Other than that, and the fact that one group had significantly more humans in it, they were almost amusingly similar. Maybe they had been a single gang previously, and had some sort of recent schism.

“Bad luck, it seems,” he said casually. “You find a decent area of the city to extort and then your evil twin shows up with the same idea.” He shrugged. “I'll leave it up to you to decide which one of you is the evil twin. Point is, might be a sign to cut your losses and go home.”

“You seem to have taken a wrong turn,” one of the red-winged bikers said tartly. “Run along and let the adults conduct our business.”

Nejaa stroked his goatee. “Okay, almost polite, not a bad way to make an impression.” He looked over at the silver-striped bikers. “How about you?”

The leader of that gang (he assumed), a Dug with more scar tissue than visible skin, looked confused and also angry over the fact that he was confused. “Move your foolish legs or pay the price, Huttspit.”

“Hmm… kind of rude. Okay, I'm calling it: _you're_ the evil twin,” he said, gesturing to the Dug. “Sorry about that, I know I said I'd let the two of you work it out. But anyway...” His voice hardened as he addressed both gangs. “Leave. Now. You don't want this.”

“And who are you to be dictating what is or is not to happen?” one of the other silver-striped bikers sneered.

“The lunatic who literally _fell out of the sky_ a few seconds ago?” Nejaa looked around in mock astonishment. “Seriously? Did none of you notice that?” He sighed. “People these days, I swear… wouldn't notice if Jabba the Hutt himself walked through here. Or slid. Does that count as walking?” He glanced at the Dug. “You look like an expert on Hutts: what do you think?”

“This is your last chance, you babbling idiot,” the leader of the red-winged gang snapped, clearly irritated at being ignored in favor of his counterpart. “Shove off or else.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, I suppose I was unclear on who was issuing the ultimatums,” Nejaa said. “That person is me.” He reached out to the Force for calm and did his best to channel it into the crowd. “You want to leave. No violence. No theft. Just go off to your favorite cantina and have a few drinks. You'll feel better, I promise.”

There was an uncertain silence. Nejaa hated those kinds of silences; it usually signaled that either his mind trick was going to just barely work or was going to fail miserably.

Being human himself, his powers of suggestion tended to work best on other humans, and if it were just the red-winged gang he would have given himself better-than-even odds of pulling it off.

The odds weren't on his side. The Dug oriented his speeder bike to face Nejaa and the rest of the silver-striped bikers followed suit.

“Your insolence may be amusing to some,” the Dug sneered, “but I think your corpse will be a much better source of amusement.”

“Aw, really?” Nejaa said petulantly. “Not even with one of these?” He drew and ignited his lightsaber.

Hisses of “Jedi” began to fill the crowd.

“Got it in one,” he congratulated them. “Last chance, everyone. Feel like sticking around and seeing how one of these works?”

The locals began to take cover inside the nearby buildings. One less thing for him to worry about, Nejaa thought.

At least he was positioned far enough away from both gangs that he wasn't in the crossfire.

The silver light of his saber cast the gang members’ features in sharp relief. One Jedi against a couple dozen bikers. He'd faced down worse.

He'd also faced down _better_ , of course.

From the other side of the block, a familiar shaft of blue light appeared.

Okay, _two_ Jedi against a couple dozen bikers.

Fortunately, most of them were still on their bikes, which made them big and obvious targets. In a space this contained, they would all be distracted with trying not to run into each other.

Time to make the days of more than a few speeder repair mechanics.

Nejaa ran forward a few steps and then dropped to his knees, sliding down and under a row of conveniently lined-up bikes. He dragged his saber along the underside, aiming for the side stabilizers. The first one whipped suddenly to the side, colliding with the bike next to it, which had already begun to list to the side. Both riders were thrown off and knocked over by a passing bike.

The air erupted in scarlet blaster fire. He kept low, trying to cause as much damage to the machines as he could in the hopes that their operators would reconsider their evening plans and leave. On the other side of the crowd, Obi-Wan was a blur of motion, blocking and redirecting as many bolts as he was dodging.

Nejaa suddenly understood how Obi-Wan was able to take out a Sith Lord. His bladework was incredible.

The crowd began to thin out. A bike spun wildly out of control and slammed against a wall, sending a few more gang members running for cover. The ones who remained, however, were the most vicious and unreasonable.

Nejaa was supposed to be skilled at observation… but it turned out that he missed something. At the corner of his vision, he finally caught sight of a small figure with blond hair making his way towards the melee.

A handful of the red-winged bikers saw Anakin first. They swung their blasters around to face him.

Oh no.

Nejaa broke into a run, heading for Anakin as quickly as he could.

As he leapt at the boy, his vision filled with red light as half a dozen blasters opened fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now you know where Corran gets it from...


	6. The Same Look

Anakin was supposed to stay out of sight, but he was pretty sure that he could still help even if he was hidden.

Besides, one of those bikers was a Dug, which made him think about Sebulba and he found that his legs were moving without him even realizing what he was doing.

He watched Obi-Wan use the Force to shove speeder bikes out of the way during the brief moments he had between blocking some shots and dodging others. Anakin knew from earlier that Master Halcyon couldn't use the Force that way, even though he seemed to be fine without it. Anakin didn't have a lightsaber and he wouldn't have known how to use one even if he did, but he could definitely do at least one thing that Master Halcyon couldn't do, so he snuck around to the other side of the fighting.

He finally got into position as a speeder bike lost control and crashed into a building nearby.

Everything was loud and a little terrifying but so was podracing and that never bothered him too much. He focused on the bike that the Dug was riding and reached out to the Force.

He felt a jolt of alarm and then heard Master Halcyon yelling “ _Valin, get down!_ ” as the Jedi Master tackled him.

Everything got much louder. Anakin smelled the sharp odor of ozone mixed with the scent of something burning. As he hit the ground, he realized that it was burning fabric.

He sat up in time to see Master Halcyon fling out an arm in the direction of the bikers, before the Jedi took over half a dozen blasters bolts in the chest.

Anakin started shouting for Obi-Wan. He didn't know if it was possible to heal people with the Force. He certainly didn't know how to do it. But maybe it was too late.

He hadn't seen Qui-Gon die, but Obi-Wan had. Was this what it was like?

The entire block seemed to explode. Anakin ducked a shower of tiny red-hot pieces of shrapnel.

Finally, Obi-Wan was there with him. Anakin was more frightened than he thought, because he found himself almost babbling in panic as he tried to explain what had happened.

“Easy, Anakin, stay calm,” Obi-Wan said, even though his voice sounded extremely strained. Kneeling, he rolled Master Halcyon over onto his back.

“Are they gone?” Halcyon groaned. He was alive.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. He looked slightly bewildered.

“Are you okay?” Anakin demanded.

Halcyon groaned again. “I forgot how much that _hurt_.” He looked at Anakin. “I'm okay. Just…” He tried to sit up, winced, and let loose a string of profanity that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a podracing arena. “Everything is on fire, I see,” he said, finally upright enough to see the aftermath of the explosion.

Obi-Wan looked at Anakin, suddenly concerned in a different way than he was a second ago. “Anakin, what you did was extremely dangerous. A lot of people could have been severely injured.”

“What?” Anakin was confused.

“Wasn't the kid,” Halcyon said. “That bit was my fault.”

“You said that you couldn't do telekinesis,” Obi-Wan said, sounding suspicious. “How could you have possibly crushed half a dozen speeder bikes together with the Force?”

“Ah,” Halcyon said, inspecting the burns on his robes, “I may have omitted one rather massive exception.” He tugged the neckline of his tunic down, revealing a chest covered in burns… but only very mild ones. Anakin knew what blaster burns looked like; those weren't it. Halcyon gave Anakin a reassuring smile. “Energy absorption. Good for blocking blaster bolts, good for getting enough power to get around my usual issues with TK.”

“That's so _wizard_ ,” Anakin breathed. “Can I learn to do that?”

Halcyon snorted with laughter. “We'll work up to it, okay?” He frowned. “Coruscant Security's almost here.”

“I'll talk to them,” Obi-Wan sighed, standing up. “Anakin, stay here.”

Anakin spent the next few minutes going over the recent events in his head. Something was nagging at him…

He remembered: “Who's Valin?”

Master Halcyon froze in what almost looked like panic. “Where did you hear that?”

“That's what you called me earlier, when you, uh… saved me.” He felt the first prickles of embarrassment crawl up his back. Master Halcyon almost just died saving Anakin's life. That wasn't a good feeling.

“He was—is—a youngling that I know,” Halcyon said. He looked very uncomfortable and Anakin didn't understand why. “Someone back on Corellia.”

Anakin didn't plan to say it; it just slipped out: “Is he the reason why you want to go back?”

After a moment, Halcyon nodded. He didn't look at Anakin.

“You're his dad, aren't you?”

Now Halcyon _did_ look at him, obviously startled. “What makes you think that?”

Anakin shifted awkwardly. “That's the same expression my mom had on her face when she said goodbye.”

Halcyon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You're correct: he's my son.”

“And you can't tell the Council,” Anakin realized. He knew that he wasn't supposed to talk about his mother at the Temple ( _she's coming, she'll be here soon_ , a voice in his head sang), but at least he didn't have to pretend that she never existed.

Halcyon nodded, eyes still closed. Through the Force, Anakin could almost see him: a boy around his own age, messy dark hair, green eyes, skin a few shades darker than Master Halcyon's. “Were you training him to be a Jedi?”

“Yes.”

“Can I meet him?”

Halcyon opened his eyes and gave him a half-smile. “If I ever get to go home for a visit, I promise I'll take you with me.”

“I've only ever been to three planets,” Anakin said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “Tatooine, Naboo, and here.” He looked over at where Obi-Wan was in conversation with the police officers. “Does Obi-Wan know?”

“Not yet.”

“So that means you're going to tell him someday. Because you said ‘yet.’”

The half-smile became a full one. “Excellent observational skills you’ve got there.”

“See? I paid attention!” Anakin said.

Halcyon sighed and his smile faded. “Next time, pay attention when we ask you to stay out of the way.” He gestured down at his ruined tunic. “Don’t make me do this again.”

Anakin nodded, feeling his cheeks redden with shame. “I won’t.”

“Come on,” Halcyon said, “and give me a hand up. I think I can probably walk now.”

* * *

“I remember what you were like as a Padawan,” Master Vokara Che, the Chief Healer, said as she shoved Master Halcyon back down onto the examination table in the Halls of Healing. “I didn’t think it was possible for you to get _worse_ at keeping yourself in one piece.”

“I did manage to walk back here, you know,” Halcyon grumbled.

“Your Padawan tells me that you walked about two blocks, passed out, and then had to wait for Obi-Wan to call a speedercab to get you the rest of the way.”

Halcyon gave Anakin a glare. “We need to have a talk after this about the value of discretion in preserving someone’s dignity.” He didn’t seem upset, though, which was a relief.

Master Che turned to Anakin. “You can run along, if you like, Anakin. Master Halcyon and I are going to be working here for some time.” The look she gave Halcyon was not an especially friendly one.

“Obi-Wan may have heard back from Tatooine by now,” Halcyon pointed out.

Anakin’s eyes widened and he took off running.

He was getting better at finding Obi-Wan’s location by using the Force, and so it only took a few minutes to reach him. His heart sank, however, when he saw the expression on Obi-Wan’s face.

“Is she okay? Did Master Windu find her?” Anakin said, doing his best not to panic… or at least to not _sound_ like he was panicking. What if he was too late? What if something had happened to her?

“She’s fine, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said quickly, realizing what he must have looked like. “Master Windu located her and arranged for her freedom.”

“Then what’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing is _wrong_. It’s just that… well, she doesn’t want to leave Tatooine.”

Anakin’s stomach felt like it was dropping into his shoes. “Why?”

“Master Windu didn’t say, but I’m trying to arrange a call so that you can talk to her.”

Anakin’s thoughts were still spinning. Why would his mother want to stay in Mos Espa when she could come to Coruscant and be with _him_? Sure, the Jedi wouldn’t necessarily allow him to see her all the time, but Master Halcyon was living proof that it was possible to be a Jedi and still have a family. Anakin could be sneaky. He was good at being sneaky when he had to be. He could figure out a way to go see her without the Order knowing.

But if she wanted to stay on Tatooine instead…

It took far too long for the comms to be ready. Anakin tried to breathe, tried to be patient like Obi-Wan had taught him, but every time he tried to calm down it felt like the gravity in the room shifted and another direction was suddenly down when it had been up before.

But finally, there she was. His mother. Right there, looking at him.

“Ani,” she said softly, her eyes almost sparkling. “How you’ve grown.” She smiled. “It is such a relief to see you.” She saw Obi-Wan standing over his shoulder. “And this is your Jedi teacher, I assume?”

“Hello, ma’am,” Obi-Wan said politely. “Anakin has told me quite a bit about you.” He did not mention that it wasn’t exactly something he had encouraged, Anakin noticed.

“Mom, they said that you weren’t coming here,” Anakin said urgently.

“It’s true, dear. I will be staying here,” she said.

“But why?” He then had an unpleasant thought. If the Council hadn’t wanted to do anything to help her until Obi-Wan and Master Halcyon made a big stink about it, maybe they weren’t going to let her leave Tatooine. “Did they say you had to?”

“No, Anakin, not at all,” she reassured him. She didn’t seem upset or afraid, which made Anakin feel a little better. “This is my own choice. You remember how hard it is here for people like us, don’t you?” After Anakin nodded, she continued: “Now that I’m free, I can help them. Perhaps even help them become free themselves and have a better life.” Her expression softened. “I want to help people, just like you’re helping people by becoming a Jedi.”

“But you’re still so far away.” Anakin knew he was about to start crying. He knew that he sounded like a little boy. He knew that Obi-Wan was standing right there and was probably feeling extremely uncomfortable. But it didn’t matter.

“Ani,” his mother said, “do you remember what I told you the last time we spoke? About how no matter where you are…”

He remembered every word. He repeated it to himself all the time. “ _‘No matter where you are, my love will be with you,_ ’” he said.

“And it’s true,” she said. “You and the other Jedi have done a wonderful thing for me. Now it’s my turn to pass that along. And this doesn’t mean goodbye forever, or even for a long time. We’re talking now, aren’t we?”

Anakin nodded, his voice trapped somewhere between his throat and his stomach.

“We still have a few minutes left before I have to go,” she said with an encouraging smile. “I want to hear everything about what you’ve been doing.”

Obi-Wan had told him again and again to keep his concentration on the here and now. At this exact moment, Anakin could do nothing but that: taking in every second of his time with her, not sparing a thought about the past or the future. She was right here, right now. He wouldn’t waste it for anything.


	7. A Magnet for Unconventional Jedi

For someone whose job was ostensibly to encourage peace and reconciliation, Obi-Wan realized that he had spent a significant amount of the last few months cutting things to pieces with a deadly weapon. Most of them were battle droids, but one of them had been an enemy that the Jedi once believed to have vanished for good.

He wondered if he should feel more uncomfortable about the fact that he was _extremely_ good at that sort of thing. Dueling had always been one of Obi-Wan’s strengths but he never expected it to be more than an occasional asset; he viewed it primarily as an exercise, a way to concentrate, and, if he was being honest, a way to blow off steam.

He wasn’t the only one, apparently. As Obi-Wan entered the nearest training salle, he found Master Halcyon using his lightsaber to deflect blaster bolts shot by a Marksman-H training remote. It was a fairly basic exercise—even younglings knew how to do it—but Obi-Wan wasn’t especially surprised to see Halcyon practicing with one given that he’d been repeatedly shot only two days ago.

He assumed that Halcyon hadn't seen him come in until, after about a minute, the Jedi Master said, “Hang on, I’m almost done.” As Obi-Wan sat on one of the benches on the side of the salle, he noticed that the remote’s control stick was on the bench next to him. There were a few ways to turn off a training remote other than using the controls: the most common one was to deflect a bolt back at it, which would send it into standby mode. There was also a switch on the remote itself, though getting within range was a challenge; most Jedi used the Force to telekinetically trigger the switch in those situations.

“Do you need this?” Obi-Wan asked, holding up the control stick.

Halcyon spared him a glance as he blocked another shot. He grinned. “Want to see something stupid?”

“To be honest,” Obi-Wan said, “no, I really don’t.”

Halcyon let out a short laugh, deactivated his lightsaber, then reached out and caught the next bolt in his hand. His other hand made a quick flicking motion and then the remote turned off. He turned back to Obi-Wan and grinned even wider than before. “I love that trick.”

Obi-Wan looked skeptical. “So you spend your time getting shot for _fun_ , apparently.”

“Every Jedi has their strengths,” Halcyon said as he grabbed the remote and returned it to its charging station. He looked momentarily thoughtful. “Though I think with Anakin, that’s going to eventually cover quite a lot.”

Obi-Wan agreed; despite having years of training to catch up on, Anakin was making phenomenal progress. It was actually a little unnerving. He was beginning to worry that he would end up pushing Anakin too fast, but he was also vaguely worried about the possibility that he might one day _run out_ of things to teach him.

“Hey,” Halcyon said, still holding his unlit lightsaber. “You didn't come here just to sit there and watch, right? Feel like dueling?”

“Absolutely,” Obi-Wan said, practically jumping to his feet. He had originally intended to just practice katas until he felt a little more centered, but this was much more appealing at the moment.

They took their places facing one another, ignited their sabers, and saluted.

“I should warn you about something before we begin,” Halcyon said as he assumed his opening stance: a single-handed low guard, with the blade held at his side pointing down at the ground.

“What?” Obi-Wan asked.

“You're probably going to kick my ass.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and moved in with an initial strike.

Halcyon batted it to the side, and the duel began in earnest.

“I meant to tell you the other night, by the way,” Halcyon said, feinting a slash at Obi-Wan’s left side, “your saber skills are pretty incredible.” He stepped back out of range of Obi-Wan’s riposte, but only barely. “Hence the warning. I’m not surprised you were the first Jedi in centuries to defeat a Sith.”

“Not that there were many other Sith to fight before now,” Obi-Wan said, blocking Halcyon’s next attack, which was a jab at his midsection. “Though he may not be the only one. Master Yoda said that there are always two Sith: a Master and an Apprentice.” That thought had been preying on him for a while now. He wondered which one he had dueled on Naboo.

“So you’re saying the rest of us might get our chance after all.” Halcyon looked a little grim.

Obi-Wan decided to change the subject. “I’m surprised: I didn’t think your fighting style would favor Makashi, given that you’re so…”

“So all over the place in everything else I do?” Halcyon supplied with a laugh. Makashi was closest in form to fencing, emphasizing precision and economy of movement. “It’s pretty much the only subtle thing I know how to do. They said it would be good discipline for me.” He again retreated a couple of steps, holding his saber parallel to the floor in one hand, his body turned to the side. “Besides, it’s the best form to prevent being disarmed—given my difficulty with telekinesis, if I ever lose my lightsaber I’m in big trouble.”

“I didn’t even think they taught it anymore,” Obi-Wan said, waiting for Halcyon to make his next move.

“I camped outside of Dooku’s quarters for almost two weeks until he agreed to teach me, and I think it was only because Master Yoda intervened.”

“I see loitering is a common method of problem-solving for you, then,” Obi-Wan said, bringing his blade around to counter Halcyon’s strike; however, just before their blades met, Halcyon deactivated his saber and stepped back out of the way. Overbalanced, Obi-Wan briefly stumbled forward, but recovered in time to block the next slash from Halcyon’s reignited lightsaber.

He must have given Halcyon a nasty look, because the Jedi Master looked amused. “I’m not too proud to beg—or to use dirty tricks.”

Obi-Wan responded by yanking Halcyon’s lightsaber out of his hand with the Force. “What was that about dirty tricks?” Obi-Wan asked, holding the silver-bladed saber in his left hand. He deactivated his own saber and clipped it to his belt, then deactivated Halcyon’s and tossed it back to him. “You may want to consider using two hands next time.”

“Oof, that was a burn more severe than a lightsaber,” Halcyon said, pretending to sound injured. “I’m more out of practice than I thought. Want to try—”

“Nejaa!” An obviously ticked-off Mace Windu stood in the doorway to the salle.

“Welcome back, Master Windu,” Halcyon said cheerfully. “How was Tatooine?”

“Was this some kind of idiotic scheme to get yourself sent back to Corellia?” he demanded as he made his way towards Halcyon. Obi-Wan decided that his own wisest course of action would be to get out of the way, and retreated back towards the benches.

“Would you believe me if I said yes?” Halcyon asked, still trying to sound upbeat.

Windu ignored his attempt at humor. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Halcyon sighed. “Things got a little out of hand, yes, but—”

“ _You_ _blew up a city block_!” Windu yelled. “We have fifteen different businesses and associations that have lodged grievances with the Order, Coruscant Security is opening a full-scale inquiry into the incident, and the Senate is in an uproar.”

“They're always in an uproar. That's their whole job.”

“At least twenty Senators have put forward legislation to place the Order under governmental oversight.”

“Are they even allowed to do that?” Halcyon asked with a frown.

“As long as we're based on a Republic world, they are.”

Halcyon held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Make an example of me, then. You know I can take it.”

Windu shook his head. “Oh, the Council already has plans for you: you're going to swallow your jokes and your sarcasm and you're going to go to the Chancellor's office and try to get him on our side.”

“Like he'll listen to me,” Halcyon protested.

“He’s agreed to the meeting.”

“It’s pointless. ”

“You'd better make sure that it’s not, Nejaa.”

Halcyon scoffed. “Or what? You'll kick me out of the Order?”

Windu's next words were ominously precise. “Not _you._ ”

Halcyon's face froze. “You wouldn't.”

“That was the deal, Nejaa, and you've been a complete failure as his Master so far.”

“Pretty low blow, Mace, threatening someone else just to keep me in line!”

“What are we supposed to do, then? You don't seem to respond to any other form of discipline!” Windu groaned in frustration. “I don't understand how you can be so responsible and diligent on Corellia but an utter disaster when you're here on Coruscant.”

“You _know_ why!” Halcyon yelled. He hurled his lightsaber across the room and into the seats on the far wall.

“Which is _exactly_ the reason why it's not allowed: because it leads to things like this! You're distracted, reckless, and completely unstable! You nearly got Skywalker and Kenobi killed!”

“I'm well aware of that, you know,” Halcyon snapped impatiently.

“Are you? Is this how you train your Padawan: by dragging him into the middle of gang fights?”

The expression on Halcyon's face changed into something dreadful. “Don't you _dare_ ,” he hissed, “say another word about him.”

Windu shook his head sadly. “I don't have to say a thing, Nejaa. You already know it, you're just not listening.” He called Halcyon's saber into his hand, then handed it back to its owner. “Tomorrow morning. Ten o'clock.”

“Guess I should go find my fancy robes, then,” Halcyon snapped and stormed off without saying another word. Obi-Wan privately thought that those were fairly odd words to close a conversation with, but _everything_ about that conversation had been bizarre.

He stood and, feeling awkward, headed for the door.

“Kenobi, wait,” Windu said. As Obi-Wan paused and turned to face him, the Jedi Master sighed. “You don’t have to worry about Skywalker’s future here. Despite what I just said, we’re not going to expel him from the Order.”

“Then why did you say it?” Obi-Wan asked, trying not to sound obviously annoyed. He was getting sick of being caught with Anakin in the crossfire of whatever psychological warfare was going on between Halcyon and the High Council.

“Because I wasn’t lying about the fact that we really don’t know how else to get him to take this seriously. He’s gambling with your future and with Skywalker’s future and doesn’t seem to realize that his actions have consequences for people other than him.”

“Master Windu,” Obi-Wan said with a frown, “should I be worried about what Master Halcyon might be teaching Anakin?”

Windu’s expression was unreadable. “What do you mean?”

“I only mean that it sounds like he has broken the rules of the Order. Or some of them, at least. Should I be worried about him teaching Anakin some kind of heresy?”

Windu almost looked amused. “I seem to recall some of the things that Qui-Gon believed about the Force being a bit closer to heresy than many on the Council were comfortable with, and yet he taught you well. You seem to be a magnet for unconventional Jedi, Kenobi.” After a brief laugh, his smile faded back to its formerly serious expression. “I think Skywalker will be fine. Master Halcyon’s transgressions are certainly an issue, but one that is primarily between him and the Council.”

“May I ask what those transgressions are?” Obi-Wan asked. He had been wondering ever since overhearing Windu and Halcyon’s conversation right after Halcyon agreed to help with Anakin, but had no idea what rules he might have broken.

“I think that is something best explained by Master Halcyon himself, but the core of the matter is that his attachments to Corellia are… excessive. Enough that he has difficulty controlling his emotions.” A look of annoyance passed briefly across his face. “As was just evident.”

“That would explain why he wanted to help Anakin’s mother, then,” Obi-Wan mused.

Windu nodded. “He has a great deal of empathy for others. He’s not a _bad_ Jedi, he’s just…”

“A bit much?” Obi-Wan supplied.

Windu actually laughed. “You’ve got that right.” He sighed. “How is Skywalker doing?”

“Talking to his mother seems to have calmed him down, which I found rather surprising. I thought it would just distract him further, but he’s much more present than he was before.”

Windu looked relieved. “Good. She was worried about that as well.”

“Was that why she decided to stay on Tatooine?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Not her primary reason. She was vague about what exactly she had planned, but reading between the lines it sounds like she's going to be starting something like waystations for escaped slaves. I told her the Order would try and put her in contact with some people off-planet.” He smiled ruefully. “Actually, she kind of harangued me into it. I'm starting to see where Skywalker gets his stubbornness from.”

Obi-Wan let out a breath that he didn't realize he had been holding since he left Tatooine all those months ago.

“Halcyon didn't know, did he?” Windu asked, studying Obi-Wan more closely than he had a moment ago. “Not until you told him?”

Obi-Wan nodded.

“Well done, Kenobi,” Windu said. He regarded Obi-Wan for another few seconds, and then left.

Obi-Wan took another deep breath and reached for his lightsaber. Practicing some katas would definitely be helpful right about now. He felt like he had just run laps around the Temple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per @Artsortment: “Is this Jedi a hair's-breadth away from being expelled from the Order? Best put him in proximity to Obi-Wan Kenobi!”


	8. Uncultured Nerfherder

He probably should have trimmed his goatee before coming here, Nejaa thought as he ran his fingers through it. It was getting too long; if he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up looking like Ki-Adi-Mundi. He snorted with laughter: it wasn’t very often that anyone got to say _that_.

Nejaa fought to keep the smirk off of his face; he was about to walk into the Chancellor’s office and he needed to do something that he had utterly failed at for the last several days: act like an adult.

* * *

He called his family the previous evening in the hopes of complaining, which he did, but also ended up getting mildly chewed out by Rostek. Justifiably so, of course: Nejaa _had_ acted like a brat.

“And you were reckless.”

“I know.”

“ _And_ it sounds like you lied to Obi-Wan about the real reason why you wanted to go out in the first place.”

“I _know_.”

“So why did you lie to him?” Rostek asked.

“Because I knew he wouldn’t like what I was actually hoping to do,” Nejaa reluctantly grumbled.

“Which meant that he was unprepared for what might happen—what _did_ happen. And that goes double for his Padawan.”

Nejaa winced over that one in particular and silently cursed his husband’s talent for pointing out uncomfortable truths.

“On the bright side,” Rostek continued, “you did prevent those gangs from extorting people.”

“Badly,” Nejaa said, unable to keep from smiling a little.

“ _So_ badly,” Rostek said with a laugh. “Quite possibly as bad as that incident with Riiden’s men and the fake warehouse.”

“Hey, _I_ was the one who figured out that it was a decoy!” Nejaa protested.

“But then we couldn’t prove that he was holding the remote at the time, because you _cut off his hand_ and it triggered the detonators.”

“I maintain that we still had _plenty_ of evidence to prove that he was directing those shipments.”

“The judge certainly didn’t think so.”

Nejaa made a face. “That judge was a piece of—”

Rostek laughed again and interrupted the well-worn argument: “What I mean to say is that you’re better than you were back then. You _know_ better than you did back then.” His eyes softened a little. “Being away—being apart—I know that it hurts. I would dearly love to have you home again, but sabotaging your own responsibilities is not the way to do it. You can’t fall apart like this, not when people are counting on you.”

Nejaa sighed. “You might be better at this whole mentoring thing than I am.” He arched an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want to come help me out here? You could use a hobby.”

His husband gave a short laugh. “I’m actually starting to take an interest in horticulture these days.”

“Well, that does sound like the sort of upper-class ridiculousness I would expect from you, dear.”

Rostek rolled his eyes. “I’ll send you a bouquet, you uncultured nerfherder.”

* * *

The Chancellor’s office seemed intentionally designed to make its visitors feel overexposed. Nejaa had never experienced agoraphobia but he suspected that it felt a lot like this. He kept looking around for places to take cover.

Furthermore, Chancellor Palpatine’s posture was so guarded that he gave Nejaa the uneasy feeling that they were both about to be shot at. His chest still itched with the injuries he acquired from the last batch of blaster fire he had taken; the sensation seemed to have intensified the second he walked in.

He was uncomfortable and he didn’t like it. He fought the urge to fidget with his robes.

The Chancellor listened politely to Nejaa’s somewhat-rehearsed apology, after which followed an awkward silence.

Nejaa wondered if it would make things _too_ much worse if he jumped out the window.

At last, Palpatine’s expression shifted into something that looked amused. “Well, Master Halcyon,” he said, “you seem to have attracted quite a bit of attention.”

“I wish I could say that it was intentional, Chancellor,” Nejaa replied ruefully.

The side of the Chancellor’s mouth twitched into what was almost a smile. “Indeed. Please,” he said, gesturing to a cluster of seats to the side of his desk.

As they sat, Nejaa realized that it was going to be a struggle not to tug at the loose threads seemingly all over the fabric of the chair. He clasped his hands in his lap and tried not to clench them too hard.

The Chancellor, meanwhile, looked relatively serene. “Of course, the downside of all of this attention is that a number of people in the Senate are jumping to quite a lot of conclusions about how the Jedi Order is run. Not that such erroneous assumptions haven’t been made before; most of them were about finances, though, not property damage or legal jurisdiction.” Palpatine shook his head in mock-resignation. “It is amazing how much havoc a single rogue Jedi can wreak.”

Nejaa did his best to look admonished. “I hope that there won’t be any future examples of that havoc, Chancellor.”

“Yes. I would imagine that you are already in more than enough trouble with the Jedi Council.”

Nejaa closed his eyes. “You have no idea.”

“I hope that they don’t end up being too hard on you. It would be a shame for such a talented investigator to lose his edge.”

“How did you—” Nejaa frowned for a second until he remembered. “Right, you were the Senator for Naboo.” He looked around the office. “Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.”

“From what I understand, Master Halcyon, your work on the investigation into Master Jinn’s murder was exemplary. The Council should value your talents more.”

“I’m pretty sure that they do.”

“Then it isn’t true that they have prevented you from returning home to Corellia?”

Nejaa could feel his eyebrows rising. “Now where did you hear that, Chancellor?”

Palpatine smiled. “I have very good sources, Master Halcyon. You have spent most of your time as a liaison to the planet’s law enforcement agencies, correct?”

“Yes.”

“I can see why you found the slums of Coruscant’s lower levels so inviting, then.” Palpatine said with a light chuckle.

“Something like that.” A thousand evenings spent patrolling the seediest sections of Coronet City, trying to save the galaxy one person at a time. Now Rostek had to continue the work without him.

The Chancellor’s expression was now one of sympathy. “You must miss your home quite a bit.”

Nejaa nodded. “I do, Chancellor,” he said, omitting the word _desperately_.

“I possess similar sentiments; I find myself longing for Naboo on occasion,” Palpatine said. “I hope that your absence is not for too extended a period.”

“So do I.”

“The Jedi tend to discourage such attachments, do they not?”

For a very bewildering second, Nejaa wondered if the Chancellor knew about Scerra, Rostek, and Valin, but he dismissed the possibility almost immediately; it was highly unlikely. He must have just misread Palpatine’s expression.

When Nejaa didn’t answer, he continued, “I will admit to not quite understanding the reasons, of course. Having something to care about gives one the strength to protect it. It is only natural to possess such strong feelings.”

Nejaa managed a smile that was only slightly strained. “I suppose that setting those feelings aside is the sacrifice that Jedi have to make.”

“My goodness,” the Chancellor said, looking astonished, “that _is_ quite a sacrifice.” He hesitated, then asked, “Is it true, then, that such emotions prevent a Jedi from being able to access the Force?”

“Access it, no,” Nejaa admitted. “Control it, yes.”

The Chancellor smiled. “I find this all fascinating, Master Halcyon. Perhaps we could find an opportunity to discuss this at greater length in the future.”

“Perhaps,” Nejaa said, beginning to feel uncomfortable again. He imagined that trying to explain the Dark Side to a politician would not end up going well.

“Your Council is likely impatient for an update, I expect,” Palpatine said as he rose to his feet. “You may tell them that I will do what I can to allow the Order to remain independent. Although Coruscant Security likely disagrees, I can see that your heart was in the right place. Besides,” he added, “property can be replaced. Lives, sadly, cannot.”

Nejaa stood and was about to offer his thanks when the Chancellor added, almost offhandedly: “And I’m sure that you did everything you could to save those two children.”

Nejaa froze mid-step. “What are you talking about?”

Palpatine looked surprised. “The ones who died in the explosion,” he said. “Had no one told you what happened?”

“Chancellor, begging your pardon, but there were only four casualties from that incident and they were all members of the swoop gangs.” He had read the reports that Coruscant Security provided to the Jedi Council. There was nothing about that in them.

Palpatine’s eyes narrowed. “I was told that there were six deaths…” His expression relaxed. “I retract my earlier statement regarding the quality of my sources; I must have been misinformed. My apologies, Master Halcyon.”

Nejaa’s mind began to spin. He would have known, the Council would have told him, if there were civilian deaths.

Wouldn’t they?

“No apology needed, Chancellor,” he said, giving him a slight bow. “Thank you for your time.”

As he headed back towards the Temple, Nejaa reflected that the meeting had somehow gone surprisingly well. The Senate would relax its stance on the Jedi Order, and hopefully the Jedi Order would likewise relax its stance on _him_.

Plus, the Chancellor seemed like a very sympathetic person. Nejaa wouldn’t mind talking to him again.

He might be an uncultured nerfherder, but Nejaa could usually get people to like him when the situation required it. A few more political adventures could be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession: Rostek is one of my favorite Legends characters so, for today, _let me tell you about Rostek Horn._
> 
> When the Jedi Purge started, Rostek was responsible for protecting what was probably a _lot_ of Corellian Jedi from the Inquisitors. This was probably made easier by the fact that he was basically the planet’s top cop at the time, but still. He also managed to survive a massive regime change on Corellia, including making it out of the Corellian Security Force in one piece after the Diktat (Corellia’s head of state) reorganized CorSec into a much more spooky authoritarian pro-Empire organization. This is especially impressive considering that he was suspected of sitting on a fairly _massive_ amount of potentially “inconvenient” information about pretty much every influential person on the planet. 
> 
> So, you know, well done Rostek. _But it gets better._ Now retired from CorSec, he decided to spend the rest of his life _trolling the hell_ out of everyone he could. You know that whole “Bouquet of Disdain” fic prompt? That’s pretty much what Rostek spent his entire retirement doing. Dude was a huge horticulture nerd who designed a ridiculous number of roses and other flower hybrids and proceeded to send them to people along with files of information that the recipient would _definitely not like getting out there_. However, the files were encrypted and no one knew how to unlock them, and this is where Rostek goes from being a snarky asshole to being a brilliant bastard: the decryption codes were written into the genetic code of the flowers he was sending them. _Anyone_ could open the files but no one ever figured out how because who the hell would spend their time gene sequencing a bunch of flowers? By the time we see him in _I, Jedi_ , Rostek has more or less terrified everyone on Corellia and is now just fucking with the minds of various politicians for his own amusement. With _roses_.
> 
> From the book: _”There’s even talk among the shadowy cabal of pundits who advise leaders about what it means for me to send a live plant versus a cut bouquet, or the true significance of a night blooming flower versus something that blooms once and then dies.”_
> 
> THIS GUY IS MY HERO.


	9. Repairs and Improvements

Anakin groaned and tried not to fall asleep on his datapad. His Aurebesh had been improving since he came to the Temple, but it was still slower than he was satisfied with. It was also _so boring_.

A lot of his training felt like that: if something was interesting, then it was easy, or at least became easy really quickly. Sensing things with the Force? Easy. Telekinesis? Incredibly easy. Using a lightsaber? _Getting_ easier: he was great at blocking the stinging bolts from those training remotes. Master Halcyon started teaching him the beginnings of energy absorption, and that was getting easier too: Anakin could stick his hand into near-boiling water now and pull the heat out with the Force without getting burned. All of this practical stuff was easy once someone showed him what to do.

Anything that involved sitting for too long, or reading, or writing, was much more difficult. He was getting better at meditating, but only because he worked really hard at it. Obi-Wan pointed out that if Anakin could put that level of effort into everything he did, it would all get much easier in the long run. Anakin didn’t really know where he was going to find the energy to put _more_ effort into things that he didn’t even want to do; why should he spend all that time when there were much more interesting things to do instead?

When he complained to Master Halcyon about it, the Corellian just smiled and said, “Easy isn’t for Jedi, kid.” Anakin did not think that was a very helpful answer.

Master Halcyon was currently at the Senate Building for another meeting with the Chancellor; meanwhile, Obi-Wan had other duties that he needed to attend to for the next hour, during which time Anakin was supposed to stay in the Jedi Archives and study. Normally, spending time in the Archives wasn’t so bad because Master Jocasta Nu was really nice and would often let Anakin look at recordings from one of the holocrons, but today she was somewhere else and the Jedi Master who was currently supervising the Archives did not look nearly as friendly.

Anakin decided to go take a walk. If anyone asked, he would just say that he felt the Force nudging him to do so; it was a pretty good excuse for doing a lot of strange things, he was learning.

Besides, maybe the Force _was_ guiding him while he wandered aimlessly around the Temple. Well, not entirely aimlessly: he was moving in the general direction of the training salles in the hopes that he could spend some more time practicing with those remotes.

However, as he passed an open door, Anakin could feel something tugging at him. Peeking inside, he saw a green-skinned woman sitting at a workbench, surrounded by a variety of tools from the drawers and shelves around her.

Other than a few things he had been able to snag from the maintenance droids, Anakin hadn’t seen any tools or mechanical parts of _anything_ since coming to Coruscant. He loved to take things apart and put them back together again, he loved figuring out how things worked, he loved making repairs and improvements. Even Watto forcing him to do it couldn’t kill the sheer joy Anakin felt from being able to look at something broken and _fix_ it.

Qui-Gon had said something about how Anakin was the Chosen One and how that meant that he was supposed to bring balance to the Force. Anakin still didn’t understand what that meant but he sometimes wondered if it meant that he was supposed to fix the Force somehow. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be good at balancing anything, but he _was_ good at fixing things.

Maybe he could wait nearby until she was gone and then go see if there was anything in there he could tinker with.

The Jedi looked up from her repairs and saw him. “Are you looking for someone?” she asked. Nothing in her tone indicated that she was upset that he had interrupted him, merely that she was curious.

Anakin shook his head. “I was just walking,” he said. He stepped cautiously into the room. “What are you working on?”

“There appears to be a loose circuit somewhere in my lightsaber,” she said, turning her attention back down to what Anakin now recognized as a disassembled lightsaber. He had never seen one in pieces like that before. “I have been able to use it so far without difficulty, but it seemed wise to take the opportunity to repair it before it caused any major problems.”

“Can I watch?” he asked.

The Jedi shifted her shoulders to readjust the black headdress that she wore. “You may,” she said, gesturing at another stool by the workbench, “provided that I am not keeping you from any other duties.”

“I’m just waiting for Obi-Wan to be done with…” He struggled to remember what his Master was off doing right now. Meeting someone? Meditating? Maybe he just needed a nap. “…with his other duties,” he finished, using the same words she had just used.

A small smile appeared on her face. “Then I can only assume that you are Anakin Skywalker, his new Padawan. Was I correct?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“A pleasure to meet you at last, Padawan Skywalker. My name is Luminara Unduli; I am a Jedi Knight.”

“You can call me Anakin if you want,” he said. Titles here were so confusing. He had called Qui-Gon by his first name and Obi-Wan by his first name, but Obi-Wan called everyone by their title except for Anakin. He was pretty sure that Master Halcyon didn’t really care what Anakin called him but Obi-Wan used his title so Anakin did as well.

“All right, Anakin. You may call me Luminara.” She was in the process of disconnecting a power cell from the rest of the assembly. Anakin was still trying to figure out what the rest of the parts did: he recognized the usual insulation and conduction pieces, and something that might have been a field energizer, but he couldn’t get a good sense of it unless he got a closer look. Most of the circuits seemed to be on the other end of the hilt, near where the blade was emitted.

The main piece, the one that fascinated him the most, was something that he rarely saw in anything he had ever worked on: a green crystal. Anakin knew that life was what generated the Force, but for some reason that piece of rock felt _alive_.

Luminara noticed him staring at it. “Has Obi-Wan taken you for your Gathering yet?” she asked.

Anakin was confused. “My what?”

Luminara thought for a moment, and then said, “Ah yes, you would have only just arrived when the last one took place. The Gathering is a rite of passage for all Jedi younglings: one in which you must enter the Crystal Caves on Ilum and find the kyber crystal that will form the heart of your lightsaber.” A smile returned to her face. “Given your Master’s skill with a lightsaber, I imagine he would be eager for you to have one of your own.”

“I’ve been learning _some_ lightsaber stuff,” Anakin said. “Just with the training sabers, though.”

Luminara began checking the connections between the power cell assembly and what Anakin was pretty sure was an energy gate. “You will notice a great difference between a training saber created for the use of many younglings and a saber you build for yourself. It will be _your_ weapon, attuned to you through the Force and a completely unique creation.”

Anakin could barely contain his excitement. He had assumed that the Order just gave Jedi their lightsabers, the way that they gave Anakin his robes and other items. But no: he was going to get to _build_ a lightsaber. “When’s the next Gathering?” he demanded.

Luminara laughed. Anakin didn’t mind; it didn’t seem like she was making fun of him. “Such enthusiasm! You should know, Anakin, that the Gathering _is_ a test: a youngling must demonstrate that they are able to follow the will of the Force and overcome their fears and weaknesses. Beware of impatience, young Padawan.”

“I _know_ ,” Anakin couldn’t help grumbling. “Obi-Wan tells me that all the time.”

“It is a lesson you would do well to internalize, Anakin.” She frowned at a group of circuits near the tip of the saber. “Patience leads to peace, which opens the way to knowledge. The Force has as much to teach you as your Master does.”

“Then why do we _have_ Masters, then?” Anakin asked. Sometimes it felt like all any of them did was tell him when he was forgetting to do something.

“Masters provide their Padawans with guidance, instruction, and an example. Obi-Wan is an excellent Jedi Knight; I think you have a very good example to follow.”

Anakin privately thought that being Obi-Wan sounded like a lot of work. He wondered if Obi-Wan was exhausted all the time; that _would_ explain a lot of his facial expressions, actually…

“There are lots of different kinds of Jedi, though,” Anakin pointed out. “Maybe I’m just a really impatient Jedi?”

“It is one thing to acknowledge areas where you need to improve, Anakin, it is quite another thing to regard it as something that cannot be changed. Impatience is not a fixed quality.”

“Yeah, but…” Anakin frowned, “…do you think I might be _too_ impatient to be Obi-Wan’s apprentice?” This question had been nagging at him for a few days but he obviously couldn’t have gone to Obi-Wan or Master Halcyon about it. “What if we’re too different?”

“In temperament, you mean?”

“Yeah. He’s really calm and serious and I try to be those things, I really do, but it’s _hard_. And I’m worried that maybe Obi-Wan is only training me because Qui-Gon told him to.”

Luminara set down the tools she was holding. “I cannot know what thoughts are in another person’s mind, Anakin, but from what I understand, Obi-Wan fought quite hard to be allowed to take you as a Padawan. While I know that he held Master Jinn in very high esteem, I am not sure that Obi-Wan would have expended that much effort if it was not something that he himself wanted to do.”

Anakin breathed a little easier but the worried thoughts wouldn’t go away: “But do you think he would be happier with a Padawan that was more… more like him?”

Luminara tapped her finger against the black facial markings under her lower lip before replying. “You have hit upon a question that is a frequent topic of debate within the Order: does a Padawan benefit most from a Master who is very similar, or from a Master who is very different?”

“Is there an answer?”

She shook her head. “There is no single answer to that question; only opinions.”

“What was _your_ Master like?” Anakin asked.

“She was Mirialan, like I am. We had many things in common, and I benefited greatly by following her example.”

“Oh,” Anakin said, feeling a little deflated. “Do you have a Padawan?”

“Not yet,” Luminara said. “But perhaps someday I will.”

“Would you want them to be like you?”

The Jedi thought about that for a moment. “I think that I would,” she said at last. “I would like to think that by knowing my Padawan better I could also somehow know myself better.”

Anakin thought about the two Jedi who were teaching him. With Master Halcyon, Anakin was learning a lot, but he wasn’t really _changing_ as a person the way he was with Obi-Wan. And, he supposed, that sort of change wouldn’t have happened if he and Obi-Wan had been more alike.

It wasn’t a bad change, either. In a way, it was like he was reassembling himself: he would be the same person as before, but maybe a little better.

“But if you only know yourself,” he asked Luminara, “how do you learn about other people?”

“Ah,” she said approvingly, “you make a good point. Self-knowledge and knowledge of others are equally important.” She smiled. “My own Master did warn me about focusing too much inward.”

“Did she do that too?” Anakin asked, grinning.

Luminara laughed. “Not that I saw. We were not alike in _all_ things.”

Anakin leaned forward on the workbench. “Can I get a closer look at the saber?”

“If you like,” she said, moving her hands out of the way to give him a better view. Anakin peered closely at the pieces of the lightsaber, looking at the ways in which every part fit together. He hadn’t considered before how much the Force was like that: full of all sorts of things that were connected—that _had_ to be connected or else nothing would exist. The way that power ran through circuits, from piece to piece, taking what would otherwise be a scrap heap and making it _alive_.

“There,” he said, pointing at a wire near the emitter. “That part’s loose.”

“I thank you for your insight, Padawan Skywalker,” Luminara said, her expression solemn but her eyes bright with amusement. She bent over the saber and began to make her repairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luminara Unduli is one of my favorite characters in _Clone Wars_ , though one of the reasons why I love her so much is because every time we see her try to console someone it always ends up being just a tiny bit bizarre. Like the time in the episode "Weapons Factory" where she tried to reassure Anakin when Ahsoka went missing by basically saying that Ahsoka was probably dead by now anyway and so he should stop wasting time worrying about her.


	10. As Obviously a Jedi as Possible

Luminara Unduli had warned him in advance, otherwise Obi-Wan would have been completely unprepared for the sudden onslaught of questions that Anakin had about the Gathering, kyber crystals, and how long he would have to wait before getting to build his own lightsaber.

“If he had grown up in the Temple, he would have gone to Ilum by now anyway,” Master Halcyon pointed out.

“There isn't another Gathering planned for at least six months,” Obi-Wan said. “He'll have to wait until then.”

“Let's see if we can get the Council to authorize a special trip. We don't even have to commandeer the whole _Crucible_ ; a small ship should be fine and we can dust off Professor Huyang when we get back.”

“Yes, I'm sure he'll be thrilled with the shake-up of a thousand generations of tradition,” Obi-Wan said drily. “The Council won't let you come along, you know.”

Halcyon grimaced. “I'm hoping that they won't look too closely at the cargo hold.” He wagged a finger at Obi-Wan in mock-admonishment. “No snitching on a Jedi Master, got it?”

“An odd way of pulling rank you have there,” Obi-Wan remarked.

He grinned. “Hey, there aren't a lot of perks to being a Master. I'll take what I can get.”

Obi-Wan had been doing his best to supplement his studies and was beginning to lay the groundwork for his own attempt at promotion to Jedi Master. He tried to tell himself that the primary goal of this process was to seek further mastery over himself and the Force, but a more honest (and cynical) part of him knew that his efforts were mostly because he wanted to relieve Master Halcyon of his supervisory duties and let the Jedi Master return to Corellia, where he (and everyone else) would be much happier.

There had been no further outbursts from Halcyon since his argument with Master Windu. In fact, he finally seemed to be calming down a little. Granted, that wasn’t saying much: he was still disorganized, fidgety, and _loud_ , but at least Obi-Wan could get a word in edgewise once in awhile.

His midnight wanderings around Coruscant’s various districts continued, although he tended to curtail his route to less risky areas when Anakin accompanied him. Once or twice, Halcyon and Obi-Wan went walking alone, and it was then that Obi-Wan figured out that the encounter with the swoop gang hadn’t entirely been an unlucky accident: it was the sort of thing that Halcyon actually sought out.

“Here, at the Temple,” Halcyon explained on one of their walks, “I feel so cut off all the time. Not from the Force,” he reassured Obi-Wan, “but from other people. I sometimes look out the window and wonder what people must think, knowing that we’re in there but so cloistered off that we might as well not be.”

“So you want to help,” Obi-Wan said. For what felt like the millionth time, his mind provided him with the memory of the duel on Naboo: trapped behind that energy shield, watching his Master die, and being unable to do anything to stop it. He walked faster, as if by increasing his speed he could outrun his thoughts.

“Damn right I want to help,” Halcyon agreed, hurrying to catch up. “I know we’re not the galaxy’s cops, but we have abilities and wisdom and, well, _privilege_ , and that gives us responsibilities. It’s not always flashy or even interesting most of the time, but it’s important.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Even when it’s supposed to be uninteresting, it doesn’t always stay that way: I was once supposed to help mediate a trade dispute and somehow ended up in the middle of a planetary invasion.”

“I wonder if it ever occurred to the Trade Federation that they could just _sell_ those battle droids and probably come out ahead,” Halcyon mused.

“So is this what you do on Corellia?” Obi-Wan asked. “Wander around looking for muggings to stop?”

“Sometimes,” Halcyon said. He paused and stood as if listening to something. “Speaking of which… follow me. Try to look imposing.”

“Imposing?” Obi-Wan asked as he followed Halcyon down a series of twisting alleyways.

“It’s all in the eyebrows.” They found a Rodian doing her best to evade the inebriated attentions of a rather belligerent Iktotchi. They heard him yelling before they saw him: the usual unpleasant things that people tended to say when they had just been rejected but hadn’t yet understood that there was nothing more they could get out of that interaction. Halcyon gestured at the Rodian. “Help her get to where she’s trying to go,” he told Obi-Wan. “I’ll have a chat with this idiot.”

The woman just needed a few minutes to call a speedercab, so Obi-Wan waited with her. He wasn’t sure what Halcyon was saying to the Iktotchi, but at one point he sensed a flash in the Force and a moment later the Iktotchi ran headlong into a wall.

“What was that?” Obi-Wan asked. The Rodian’s harasser was now sprawled out on the ground.

“Oh, you know,” Halcyon said, walking over to Obi-Wan with what he probably thought was a casual saunter, “it can get so disorienting in alleys like this. Poor guy tried to take a swing at me and got so turned around that he tried to fight the wall.”

Obi-Wan looked skeptical. “Turned around, you said?”

Halcyon tried to look innocent and failed. “Very confusing, those alleys. Deceptive. Sometimes you don’t know _what_ you’re looking at.”

“Mind trick, then?”

“Well, obviously.”

The Rodian caught her speedercab and the two Jedi resumed their walk.

“After I became a Knight,” Halcyon continued, “I was sent to Corellia by the Acquisition Division, but at the time there weren’t really any young Force-sensitives around to recruit, so I found other ways to spend my time. I was born there but otherwise it was all new to me. I did a lot of wandering around Coronet City—that’s the capital—and kept walking into trouble.” He smiled. “How was I to know that the district called Treasure Ship Row was also a hotbed of illegal activity?

“I take it you figured it out eventually.”

“Eventually. Then I started my one-man vigilante effort to clean the place up, having _no_ idea what I was doing, and getting arrested by the Corellian Security Force more often than not. Fortunately, I met a few CorSec officers who were willing to talk to me.” His eyes had a very far away look in them, Obi-Wan noticed. “Not a lot of people trust CorSec, and I can’t really say that I blame them—there’s a very nasty tendency among the old guard there to shoot first and investigate later, especially when interacting with non-humans—but there were a few officers who were trying their best, and I thought maybe I could help. I studied at the CorSec Academy for a time and then got myself more-or-less permanently assigned as a kind of Jedi liaison.”

“And you do this sort of thing there?” Obi-Wan asked.

Halcyon gave him a short laugh. “Sometimes. I try to work within the system where I can, but—much to my partner’s complete exasperation—there are also times when it can be pretty useful to be a superpowered monk with a laser sword, you know? It tends to divert the mind away from things like grand larceny.” He laughed again. “So I show up looking as ‘Obviously a Jedi’ as possible, and often I can deescalate a situation to a point where people are willing to talk instead of just shooting at each other.”

“Unless they’re a swoop bike gang,” Obi-Wan pointed out.

“On the plus side, the _next_ gang that encounters a Jedi around here is probably going to take an extra second to think about their life choices.”

* * *

Master Halcyon had also been having semi-regular meetings with the Chancellor. No one was really sure what those meetings were about, least of all Halcyon himself.

“He mostly just keeps asking me questions about the Force and the Jedi Order,” he said, sounding a little bewildered. “I don’t _mind_ , especially—he’s a fairly pleasant guy—and I figure that the more he understands about the Order, the better we’ll fare in the public opinion, right?”

Obi-Wan found it almost as strange as Halcyon did, but Anakin thought the whole thing was quite fascinating. They both encountered Chancellor Palpatine back during the Naboo crisis, but things had been so chaotic at the time that neither of them remembered much about it.

Anakin had started hinting that he wanted Master Halcyon to take him along next time, though was remarkably restrained about it in Obi-Wan’s opinion. Halcyon said that he would bring Anakin with him once he figured out “why the hell I’m going to see him in the first place.”

Halcyon came back from one meeting with good—but confusing—news: Palpatine had requested him personally for a diplomatic mission to the Chancellor’s home planet of Naboo. “Something annoyingly formal,” Halcyon said with a shrug, “but it’s supposed to take all of an hour and the Jedi should probably send _someone_ … so why not us?”

“Us?” Anakin asked, nearly glowing with excitement.

“Hey, did you really think I’d leave you behind?”

“Does that mean we’ll be—”

Halcyon cut him off with an obvious ‘ _zip-it_ ’ gesture that made Obi-Wan extremely nervous, especially when he remembered that the fastest route to Naboo was along the Corellian Run.

The Council was even less thrilled, but were still in a perilous enough position with the Galactic Senate that they needed to keep the Chancellor relatively happy. Obi-Wan was fairly certain that Mace Windu was going to find a way to put a homing beacon on their ship, though.

* * *

Obi-Wan wasn’t even entirely sure that Halcyon hadn’t made the whole assignment up as an excuse to leave Coruscant, but at least their ship’s navicomputer was set for Naboo. Even so, Obi-Wan still didn’t let him into the cockpit during the first few hours of the trip.

Halcyon instead spent most of the journey trying to tutor Anakin in astronavigation. It had just enough to do with mechanics that Anakin’s eyes didn’t entirely glaze over in boredom, but it was still abstract enough that Obi-Wan was glad that he didn’t have to be the one to teach it.

During the final few hours before exiting hyperspace, Halcyon’s voice came on over the cockpit’s comm unit: “Hey, Obi-Wan,” he said, attempting to sound casual and utterly failing, “what was the name of the part that broke on the Queen’s ship?”

Obi-Wan groaned. “One that has to be replaced completely and the merchants on Tatooine don’t take Republic credits.”

He actually heard Anakin make a disappointed noise in the background.

“Oh, well, that’s good to know,” Halcyon said, “because that is definitely not the part that just broke.”

“What did you do?” Obi-Wan demanded.

“Nothing!” There was a crash in the background and the ship reverted to realspace with a violent jerk. “Okay, _now_ I may have done something. Just a conduit, though!” he added. “Nothing that can’t be fixed with some cheap materials and a little hard work.”

“I’m coming back there,” Obi-Wan said.

“Good thing we’re so close to Tatooine right now, isn’t it?” Halcyon called cheerfully as Obi-Wan exited the cockpit and headed back towards whatever horrible disaster awaited him.


	11. The Second Tragedy

“I hope you don’t take offense at this, Anakin,” Nejaa said, squinting out at the sun-scorched streets of Mos Espa, “but your homeworld is terrible.”

Anakin shrugged. “I know.” He didn’t seem to be really listening, though, to Nejaa’s relief; in fact, his attention was on nearly everything but the two Jedi at his side. The look of home, Nejaa realized, of returning after a long absence and not knowing how exactly you fit back into the places where you once lived seamlessly. Not that Anakin wanted to stay here—no amount of missing home could make up for the fact that it was _Tatooine_ —but attachments persisted in spite of everything.

Shmi Skywalker had moved to a new residence after Mace Windu arranged for her freedom, which meant that it took longer for them to find her than Anakin would have liked. For the last few streets, he was practically running, with Nejaa and Obi-Wan doing their best to keep up without breaking into a run themselves.

For the first few minutes, he waited with Obi-Wan outside the nondescript stone building while Anakin spent time alone with his mother. Eventually, though, Anakin beckoned them inside and began to show them everything, starting with his mother. Shmi Skywalker’s face had been weathered by sun and a life of hardship, but something about her carried an air of absolute serenity. Nejaa actually caught a look from Obi-Wan indicating that the young Jedi Knight was definitely harboring an opinion about who had the more Jedi-like temperament, Nejaa or Shmi.

She spoke softly but firmly, was kind and generous, seemed utterly nondescript… and yet something about her was nagging at Nejaa like a persistent insect. She was almost _too_ unassuming, and that made his investigator instincts immediately go to work.

This made him feel a little terrible: obviously Shmi had had a difficult life and had likely done a great many unpleasant and painful things in order to get through each day. Being easy to overlook was necessary for survival in a place like Tatooine, especially for people in slavery. She didn’t deserve his suspicion. He needed to let it go.

There was some commotion outside that turned out to be someone named Kitster, a young man around Anakin’s age. Anakin ran up to his mother and asked her quietly about the location of some item he had left behind, and whatever her reply was, it made her son shout in excitement.

“Only a few more parts to go!” he crowed. “Obi-Wan, come on! We’ve got to get the rest!” In a flurry of motion and excited noises, Anakin dragged Obi-Wan and Kitster out of the home and down the street, leaving Nejaa alone with Shmi.

“You’re not joining them?” she asked.

“If it’s alright with you, I’d rather stay indoors,” Nejaa said, ambling around the room that served as the home’s non-sleeping area. “I don’t do too well in the heat.”

“You are welcome to stay,” she said, with a slight shrug that reminded him of Anakin. “Though I can’t promise anything particularly exciting.”

“As long as the suns stay outside, you’ll hear no complaints from me,” Nejaa assured her. “Thank you for letting us barge in on you like this.”

“It seems that hosting the odd Jedi or two has become one of my vocations,” she said with a smile. “I’m glad that this time it includes my son as well.”

“Me too,” Nejaa said. “He’s missed you.”

“I thought I would never see him again.” She sighed, then gave him a calculating look. “It seems as though the Jedi changed their minds about that, then?”

“Anakin grew up here. Most Padawans don’t have memories of their homes.”

“Satisfying your curiosity, then?” she asked, sitting down in one of the room’s three chairs.

“Something like that…” Nejaa said, still wandering around the room. He was pacing, thinking on his feet. Something was strange, something was off, something he wasn’t noticing yet…

It clicked. “You’re not from here, are you?” he asked, coming to a stop. “Your accent, your vocabulary—hell, even your body language—none of that matches anyone else we’ve seen on Tatooine so far.”

Her smile was still serene. “I could merely be from another region of the planet, you know. Perhaps all the mannerisms you have seen in the others are just those native to Mos Espa. And Skywalker is a very Tatooine sort of name.”

Nejaa shook his head, his own expression remaining pleasant. “No, I don’t think that’s it. And I don’t think Skywalker is your real name. You’re from off-planet—maybe still in the Outer Rim, because that’s not really a Core accent you’ve got there—middle-class at least, highly educated.” He frowned, knowing that the next question was going to hurt. “How did you end up here?”

“An accident,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I was on my way from one planet to another and my ship—not in good shape to begin with, and in even worse shape after my departure—was damaged. I landed here to make repairs but…” Her face and voice tightened. “Well, Gardulla’s people claimed it was for the repayment of debts that I owed her, but it was primarily because I was alone and unarmed and they knew no one would come looking for me.”

Nejaa shut his eyes. “That’s horrible.”

“That is not news to me, Jedi,” she said. Opening his eyes again, Nejaa saw a look of what might have been amusement, but one of a very dark humor. “I tried to escape, but soon Anakin was born and I had to abandon those efforts in order to make sure he survived.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know how young our children are when they have their trackers implanted? Not even a year old. Before they can even walk, measures are taken to make sure that they will never escape.”

Nejaa remembered Valin when he was that age. The thought of someone putting a bomb under his child’s skin nearly made him retch.

Shmi noticed. “That revulsion is not for Anakin, is it? Not for him alone, at least.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. The Force nudged at him and he decided to take a risk. “I have a son of my own. A couple of years older than yours.”

“I thought Jedi were not supposed to have families.”

“As far as the Jedi Order knows, I don’t have one.”

“You’re entrusting me with your secret, then?”

“Yes. In the hopes that you’ll trust me with a few of yours.” He took a deep breath and sat down across from her. It felt like the beginning of an interrogation and he didn’t understand why. He could sense that Shmi did want to talk about it, but was having difficulty doing so directly. There was something big here, something important, something that she believed would change everything for her and for Anakin… and not necessarily for the better.

She was protecting him. “If not Tatooine, where are you from?” he asked.

“I ran away from home,” Shmi said, appearing to ignore the question in favor of her own method of recollection. “Granted, I was a grown woman at the time, but the fact remains that I had to escape someone who held power over me. When your fellow Jedi came here, I thought for sure that Padmé was going to figure it out immediately, but Anakin proved to be so distracting that she didn’t have the opportunity.”

“Naboo,” Nejaa breathed. “You’re from Naboo.”

Shmi nodded. “There are only so many places that a damaged ship can take refuge that close to Naboo. Their situation was so similar to my own that I thought for a moment that I was dreaming. There was even a handmaiden,” she said, shaking her head in wonder before giving Nejaa a brief smile. “I was a handmaiden myself when I was younger.”

“Was that who you were running away from?” he asked. “The monarch you worked for?”

“No,” she said, once again sounding amused. “King Tapalo’s reign ended years before I left Naboo.” Her expression darkened. “I ran from someone else, someone I served after that.”

The way she said _‘served’_ sent a shiver running up Nejaa’s spine. “What were you doing, then?”

“You cannot tell Anakin about this,” she said, her expression suddenly severe. “Not yet. Not until he is ready to know. Not until he can understand it.”

“Sure, but I don’t understand why this is a secret,” Nejaa said. “So you grew up on Naboo and had to make a hasty exit? That's not a huge revelation. Why didn’t you tell Qui-Gon any of this?” He remembered reading Qui-Gon’s report of their meeting, how Shmi implied that Anakin had been conceived by the Force itself.

“For one thing, he did not ask. He saw what he wanted to see: a naive slave, unaware of the treasure that she held in her arms. I knew that he wanted to take Anakin, so I did what I had to do, said what I had to say, in order to ensure that he did so.”

“Then Anakin does have a father.” Nejaa’s mind flooded with all sorts of unpleasant scenarios about the boy’s conception.

“Ah,” Shmi said, a strange smile growing on her face, “as long as we are being truthful with one another: no, that part was not a lie. There was never a father. He is mine alone. I created him myself.”

Nejaa frowned. “Okay, now I’m really confused.”

“Tell me, Jedi,” she said, that same smile still resting on her lips, “did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?”

“What?” Nejaa was fighting the sudden animal instinct screaming at him to run for his life.

“I suppose it’s not a story the Jedi would tell you,” she said with a shrug. “There was once a Sith Lord so powerful in the Force that he had mastery over life and death, to the point that he could stop others from dying. He could even, it was said, manipulate midichlorians to create life.”

“How do you know this?” Nejaa whispered, knowing that he was not going to like the answer.

“I know this because Darth Plagueis had an apprentice… and I was that apprentice’s acolyte.”

By reflex, Nejaa’s hand went to the lightsaber on his belt.

Shmi actually laughed. “Relax, Jedi. You’re not in any danger. I left that life behind years ago—why do you think I fled Naboo to begin with?” When Nejaa forced his hands back down to his sides, she continued. “Plagueis’ apprentice, a man called Sidious, taught me for several years, and eventually there came a day when I realized two things.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “First, that for all of his obsession with creating life, Sidious’ only talents were in causing death. And second,” she smiled, “that I knew something he didn’t know: how Plagueis was able to do it.”

“When you created Anakin,” Nejaa said, beginning to understand.

“It was admittedly not how I had expected it to go,” she said, almost sounding a little sheepish. “Becoming pregnant was not part of the plan, but I worked with what I had. When I realized I had succeeded, I knew that I would either have to run away or kill Sidious and supplant him, and I knew that I wasn’t powerful enough to do the latter. So I ran. I tried to teach Anakin a little, enough to help him survive, but I knew almost nothing about the Light Side. I also knew that if I tried teaching him to use the Dark Side it would almost certainly attract Sidious’ notice, even out here.”

“Which is why you wanted Qui-Gon to take him to the Order.”

“I thought that being with the Jedi would mean that Sidious would never be able to reach him,” Shmi said, her expression becoming distant. “But I was wrong: my former master is everywhere now. There is no place that he cannot go, even inside the Order.”

“Who is he?” Nejaa felt a lump of ice growing in the pit of his stomach, colder than the caves of Ilum.

“He was a Senator, back when I first met him… I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that someone with the desire to control life and death would settle for control of the galaxy instead…”

Everything inside Nejaa froze. “Chancellor Palpatine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is apparently what happens when the author is just winging it instead of planning anything in advance: a massive Drama Bomb turns up in the middle of what was originally meant to be kind of a screwball comedy. 
> 
> I noticed a major blind spot for me recently, which is that for the longest time I basically just ignored Shmi as a character because the films give her absolutely nothing to work with. Which is ridiculous! There’s a lot of good potential there, especially with the oft-explored idea that she might be Force-sensitive herself. 
> 
> I wrote a shorter fic about a Force-sensitive Shmi starting a rebellion on Tatooine and then just bugging the hell out of Qui-Gon Jinn when he comes to sort things out, but wanted to try something a little different in this one. I’ve always given a massive amount of side-eye to the idea that Anakin was some kind of “virgin birth” situation because, well… a lot of horrible things happen on Tatooine. But for this story, I decided to run with the premise of “okay, what if there actually _wasn’t_ a father?” And then I remembered all of the fan theories regarding Darth Plagueis and Sidious and then I got IDEAS that rapidly spiraled out of control. So here we are.
> 
> Hijinks will continue to ensue, I promise! No one’s dying! No one’s turning to the Dark Side (probably)!
> 
> I reiterate what I said in the notes for Chapter 1: I have _no idea_ where this fic is going _at all._


	12. The Same Voice

The device in Anakin’s hands had two small lights on it: one red and one green. For a moment, the red light blinked slowly… then, suddenly, it turned green.

“Yes!” Anakin shouted. He took another look at the device; it had worked.

“They can’t reactivate it, right?” Kitster asked, a little worried.

“Nope!” Anakin reassured him. “It turns off the transmitter inside it for good. It’ll never pick up another signal.”

No more trackers. No more slaves kept in line by the threat of their masters detonating the tiny bomb implanted inside their bodies. Anyone, with a little help, could run away, get off Tatooine, and never have to worry about their former masters following them.

He had been working on a device to deactivate the trackers for years, but had never quite figured out the final configurations necessary to know for sure if it would work. These last few months in the Jedi Temple, he learned a few more things about mechanics and how those sorts of transmitters worked. Not only that, but they surgically removed his own tracker, which meant that he could take it apart and figure out how to turn them off permanently.

And it had worked. Kitster was the very first one, but there would be more.

Obi-Wan spent the time watching in silence, his face calm, but Anakin could sense a lot of complicated emotions just under the surface. Right now, he mostly just looked relieved.

There was still a part of Anakin that fantasized about coming back to Tatooine, lightsaber in hand, and getting rid of all the masters. Maybe one day he’d do it, even if revenge wasn’t the Jedi way. But, for now, this was a start.

They ran back to his mom's house to tell her the good news—

Stepping across the threshold felt like entering another world. Everything was so cold that for a moment Anakin forgot how to breathe.

His first concern was for his mother, but she was just sitting there, looking the same as always.

Master Halcyon, on the other hand…

The only word that came immediately to mind was _‘shattered'._ Through the Force, Anakin could almost see the fractures that Halcyon was only just barely holding together. His eyes were wide with horror and his breath came in shallow gasps. He looked like he could barely stand; behind him, a chair was overturned, as though he had stood up too quickly and knocked it over.

Anakin didn't know what could possibly terrify a Jedi Master yet not bother his mother at all.

“Mom?” Anakin asked hesitantly.

Master Halcyon whipped his head around to look at Anakin, staring at him as though for the first time in his life. He turned back to Anakin's mother and started to speak, but the words seemed to stumble inside his mouth.

Anakin's mother spoke first: “Everything's fine, Anakin. Master Halcyon is just tired from the heat, that's all.” She looked back at the Jedi Master. “You should sit back down,” she suggested to him.

Anakin knew that voice; it was the one his mother used when something upsetting had happened but she didn't want Anakin to know about it because he would be upset too. Master Halcyon picked up the overturned chair and sat down heavily in it. He looked light-years away.

“Mom, we finished the deactivator!” Anakin cried, deciding to give Halcyon a second to collect himself before asking any questions. He _had_ lectured Anakin about the importance of discretion in preserving someone's dignity, after all.

His mother's face lit up with delight as he placed it into her hands. “Anakin, this is wonderful!” She looked at it closer than before, then smiled up at him. “This is going to change the lives of so many people. You have created something incredible.”

“I'm writing down instructions so Kitster can build more,” he said as the boy in question finally caught up with him.

“I can remember how to do it,” Kitster protested.

“Yeah, but the more of these that are around, the better,” Anakin pointed out. He thought for a second: lots of the people he knew who were good with tools didn't know how to read very well. Pictures would work better, he decided. “I've got stuff back at the ship I can use to make copies of the instructions.”

“The ship…” Master Halcyon whispered. He stood up suddenly, knocking the chair over again. “We have to go back to the ship,” he said. “Obi-Wan! We have to go back to the ship!”

Obi-Wan, who had just entered the house, was obviously trying to read the room and becoming completely lost in the process. “Right now?” he asked, puzzled.

“Yes, right now, we have to call the Council right now, we—”

“ _No._ ”

That was his mother, that was the voice she used that he obeyed without question, the one that meant that something important had happened and that if he didn't immediately follow her instructions he was going to die or worse. It was the voice that stopped him from getting too close to danger, from talking back to Watto when he was in a vicious mood, from touching something that shouldn't be touched.

Anakin froze. So did the rest of the room.

“Master Halcyon,” his mother continued in a gentler voice, “we had an agreement.”

Halcyon shook his head wildly. “But that didn't include the Council, they have to know about this, they have to do something!”

“If you tell them,” she said, “they will want to know how you know. It will lead them back here and that _cannot_ happen.” Some of the steel had returned to her voice.

“What are you talking about?” Obi-Wan asked. At least he was just as confused as Anakin was. Something had happened between his mother and Master Halcyon, something that had sent the latter into a panic.

“Can I tell _him_ , at least?” Halcyon asked, gesturing at Obi-Wan.

“You'll have to,” his mother said. “Otherwise, you can't protect him.” That last ‘ _him_ ’ was apparently Anakin, judging by the look she gave him.

“Protect me from what?” Anakin asked.

“Anakin, go back outside,” his mother said.

“Keeping him in the dark isn't going to help,” Halcyon warned.

“Anakin, _go outside_.”

That wasn't a voice he could argue with. Anakin and Kitster fled to the street.

“What _was_ that?” Kitster asked.

“Shh,” Anakin whispered, resting his head against the door. “I'm trying to listen.”

“We have to go to _Naboo_ next!” Master Halcyon was saying, obviously _trying_ to keep his voice down, but as usual not doing a very good job of it. “When we get back to Coruscant, he’s going to want to talk to me and I’m going to have to come up with something!” He took a deep breath. “The Council has to know about this,” he repeated.

“What is going on?” Obi-Wan asked. Anakin leaned in closer, hoping for an answer that would explain what had happened that was so important that the rest of the Order had to know immediately.

“Tell him on the ship,” his mother said. “But no one else.”

“I can figure out a way to tell them so that they can’t trace it back here,” Halcyon argued.

“If they know, then they will act.”

“How could that _possibly_ be a bad thing?” Halcyon demanded.

“I know what he’s like: he has a nearly infinite number of plans for almost any situation. He will have prepared for the possibility that you or someone else would find out. You will not be able to move against him directly… not unless you _trap_ him, unless you make it so that he cannot possibly escape.” She paused. “And you're not strong enough to do that. Not yet.”

“Do you think Anakin—” Master Halcyon began, but Anakin’s mother cut him off.

“He’s listening at the door.”

There was a long silence.

“Why did you bother telling me, then?” Halcyon asked at last.

“Because you demonstrated to me that you care more about protecting the people you love than you do about following the rules of the Jedi,” she replied. “Please… I need to know that I was right to trust you.”

Anakin began to feel anxious. He knew that his mother didn’t tell him everything, and to some extent he was grateful for that, but this sounded much worse than the usual unpleasantness that was a fact of life in Mos Espa. This was something terrifying, something that was too dangerous to know about… something that his mother didn’t want _him_ to know about, more than anyone else.

Halcyon sighed. “I won’t bring it to the Council… but there _is_ one member that I want to tell. He’s kept my secrets from the rest of the Council; he’ll keep this one too.”

Anakin wasn’t sure which Council member Master Halcyon was referring to, but he was pretty sure that the secret he mentioned had something to do with his son on Corellia. Anakin was beginning to get dizzy with all of the unspoken words whirling around him like a cloud of sand.

“I cannot stop you,” his mother said. “I can only warn you: even knowing what you know, he is far more dangerous than you think.”

“ _Who_ is?” Obi-Wan asked, starting to sound extremely annoyed.

“I’ll tell you on the ship,” Halcyon said. “Speaking of which, we should probably hurry and finish our repairs if we’re going to make it to Naboo in time.”

Anakin scrambled away from the door just before it opened. Master Halcyon had calmed down enough that he was no longer panicking, but his expression was grim. Obi-Wan, meanwhile, had gone past being annoyed and was now just blatantly frustrated with the entire situation.

“You said you had to get some materials from the ship, right?” Halcyon asked Anakin. “Let’s go.” He turned back to look at Anakin’s mother. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

Anakin tried to catch his mother’s eye, but she instead stood and picked up the overturned chair. She didn’t look at Anakin at all.

* * *

Showing Kitster the ship was admittedly fun, and for a moment Anakin actually wondered if Kitster wanted to come with them when they left for Naboo, but when he posed the question his friend was surprisingly resolute.

“If I’m not here, who’s going to build these things?” Kitster said, tapping a finger against the sheets of flimsiplast on which Anakin had drawn the instructions for building additional deactivators. “I’ve got a job to do now.” He laughed, sounding surprised. “My own job. I could get used to saying that.”

After they deactivated enough of the trackers, Anakin’s mother would help the slaves that wanted to escape get off-planet. But, in order to ensure that he could continue the work, Kitster would have to stay where he was.

“It’s not so bad,” he said after Anakin expressed his regret over that part of the plan, “I know I’m free on the inside. _They_ just don’t know it yet.”

“I’ll come back,” Anakin promised, giving his friend a fierce hug. “This is only the beginning.”

Saying goodbye to his mother wasn’t as hard as it was the last time he left, but it wasn’t easy, either. He was really worried about her now; when he went back to the house the feeling of cold lingered in the air and his chest felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand.

“Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” he asked at last.

“Because I need to keep you safe,” she said, rubbing his back.

“But you told Master Halcyon.”

“Which was also to keep you safe. He and Obi-Wan need to protect you, especially because I can’t be there to do it.”

“I can protect myself, you know,” he said petulantly.

She smiled. “I know you can. But for now, you need to focus on what you are learning from the Jedi, all right?”

Anakin nodded. He still wasn’t completely comfortable, though.

“Remember,” she said, “no matter where you are, my love will be with you.”

“Mine too,” he said, and felt his chest tighten again.

Master Halcyon was the one who walked Anakin back to Mos Espa while Obi-Wan repaired the ship (something Obi-Wan was not at all pleased about, seeing as Master Halcyon was the one who broke it to begin with). As they were about to leave his mother’s house, Halcyon stepped close to her and passed her a piece of flimsiplast.

His voice was quiet, but Anakin could still make out what he was saying. “My…” His eyes flicked over to Anakin for a moment, then back again. “My wife is a sentient rights lawyer. She knows people who can help with what you’re doing.”

Anakin’s mother nodded, but said nothing more.

On the walk back to the ship, Anakin couldn’t help asking, “What did you and my mother talk about earlier?”

Halcyon gave him a wry smile. “Hey, you don’t want to get me in trouble with your mom, do you?”

Anakin scowled. So much for that.


	13. Closing the Door

Obi-Wan was tired, sore, and his robes were covered in some kind of engine grease, which would already be enough to put him in a foul mood. The added uncertainty around the events of a few hours ago just made it worse.

After what was far too long a time in Obi-Wan's opinion, Halcyon came up to the cockpit and shut the door behind him. Once the ship entered hyperspace, he pulled a small disc-shaped object out of his robes.

“Sound masking device,” Halcyon explained after he turned it on. “Cancels out any noise; Anakin won't be able to listen in.”

Obi-Wan frowned. Those were fairly rare items. “Why do you have one of these?”

“I use it when I call home. I'll explain why later. This is more important.” Obi-Wan could see him trying desperately not to fidget in the co-pilot's chair. He ran a hand through his goatee. “I don't even know how to start.”

“Really, _anywhere_ would be helpful at this point,” Obi-Wan said, his patience wearing so thin that it was probably transparent at this point.

Halcyon exhaled in frustration. “Okay… you said Yoda told you that there were always two Sith, right?”

 _Oh no…_ Obi-Wan knew that, wherever this line of questioning was going, it was going to end up somewhere unpleasant. He nodded.

“The one you killed on Naboo… that was the apprentice. The master is still out there.”

“You know who it is,” Obi-Wan realized.

“So do you.”

There was a pause that seemed to last an eternity, during which Obi-Wan's mind ran through a furious list of every person he had ever met, every conversation he had ever had, every moment that might have given him a clue—

Halcyon looked like he was bracing for impact. He finally spoke, almost in a whisper: “Sheev Palpatine.”

“The Chancellor,” Obi-Wan said, feeling as though he had somehow slipped out of his own body.

“Yes.”

“The Chancellor… is a Sith Lord.” His mouth was moving all on its own. His brain had come to a complete stop.

“He calls himself Darth Sidious, apparently.”

The air around him seemed to be rippling like water. He felt faint.

“Could you…” Obi-Wan heard himself say, “…could you give me a moment alone?”

Halcyon nodded and stood. “Sure thing.” He opened the door to the rest of the ship, revealing a sulking Anakin crouched nearby, obviously upset at having his attempt at eavesdropping foiled. “Come on, scoot,” Halcyon said, hauling the Padawan off towards the rear of the ship.

Obi-Wan closed the cockpit door. He didn't remember standing up to do so, but here he was, on his feet.

His hands were trembling.

_Sheev Palpatine._

At the victory celebration on Naboo, he shook Obi-Wan's hand. “My sincerest condolences on your loss,” he said. “Master Jinn was a great man. His loss must be a heavy blow.”

And all that time, he knew who had killed Qui-Gon.

He shook Obi-Wan's hand and looked at him with eyes that were so sympathetic.

And he _knew._

He stood there and let the Jedi conduct their investigation into the attack and _he knew because he was the one who sent the Sith after them._

Obi-Wan slammed his hands on the console and screamed.

He knew that they were going back to Naboo and he sent his apprentice to set a trap for them, one that only Obi-Wan had managed to escape and even then it was by the barest of margins and the will of the Force and _all this time_ the Chancellor was a Sith and nobody knew, nobody suspected, no one would believe them…

He didn't know how long he screamed, anger and horror and revulsion ripping his throat raw and probably tearing a hole in the Force itself, but eventually he ran out of energy and breath. He was empty.

Into that space rushed dozens of questions.

He hit the control to open the door of the cockpit. Halcyon was standing there, holding a cup of water.

“Here,” he said, passing it to Obi-Wan as he re-entered the cockpit and closed the door behind him again. “Thought you might need that.”

Obi-Wan sank down into the pilot's chair and gulped down the contents of the glass. “Did you hear any of that?” he asked. His throat was still in pain but at least he could speak again.

Halcyon shook his head as he sat down in the co-pilot's seat. “Not with my ears, though you were so loud in the Force that I could practically _taste_ it.” He tried to smile. “Ready to talk some more?”

“I think so.” He certainly had questions, the most troubling of which he decided to ask first: “How did she know?”

“She's from Naboo,” Halcyon said. “Got stuck on Tatooine and… well… you can probably imagine what happened.”

“But how did she _know?_ ” Obi-Wan demanded. Halcyon was trying to avoid the question and Obi-Wan realized that the answer was probably so much worse than he thought.

“Who could be face to face with a Dark Lord of the Sith and live to talk about it?” Halcyon asked. He didn't look at Obi-Wan.

“I don't know," Obi-Wan said, but he was beginning to understand that he _did_ know. He just didn't want to think about that possibility in the same thought as Shmi Skywalker.

She had been so kind. She had been so gentle. She was Anakin's _mother._

She couldn't be what Halcyon was implying.

“The Zabrak,” Obi-Wan said, his voice almost desperate, “ _he_ was the apprentice.”

“But he wasn't the first,” Halcyon said softly.

“She spent years on Tatooine as a slave! If she had been able to do things like that, why was she—”

Halcyon somehow managed to interrupt him with just a sigh. “From what I understand, they had some kind of Force bond that led her to believe that if she tapped into the Dark Side, he would know she was alive and on Tatooine. And then he would find out about Anakin.”

Obi-Wan tried to imagine a scenario where slavery and exploitation were somehow preferable to having a Sith know where you were. Where having your _child_ enslaved was a more acceptable alternative.

Another horrible thought occurred to him: “Anakin isn’t _his_ —”

“No,” Halcyon said quickly. A look of bewilderment crossed his face. “ _That_ part of her story was true: there wasn’t a father. I don’t know whether it was Sith alchemy or what, but she did something and then Anakin just… kind of _happened,_ I guess. I don’t know what this means for the whole ‘Chosen One’ theory—it’s possible that she told Qui-Gon what she did in order to make him believe that it was Anakin, to guarantee that Qui-Gon took him back to Coruscant—”

At the mention of his former Master, something inside Obi-Wan erupted. “Why didn’t she _tell_ him about this?” he shouted. “She knew about Palpatine and she didn’t say a _thing,_ she let Qui-Gon leave knowing that there was a Sith on the loose and that we could have stopped him, we could have—”

“Whoa, slow down,” Halcyon said, holding out a hand in caution. “You’ve got to remember the sequence of events here: at the time that you and Qui-Gon left Tatooine, Palpatine wasn’t Chancellor yet. He was just some Senator from an Outer Rim world, no one with much influence in galactic politics. She thought that you would take Anakin to Coruscant and leave him there, not haul him off to Naboo with you. She thought he’d be safe in the Order, that he’d be somewhere that Palpatine couldn’t reach.” He used the hand he had held out to scratch the back of his neck. “I mean, I wish we _had_ known, but I can see where she’s coming from.”

“How do you know that she isn’t lying to us?” Obi-Wan asked.

Halcyon lowered his hand back into his lap. “What’s the Force telling _you_ about all this?”

Every part of Obi-Wan was still screaming that it wasn’t true, that it was impossible, but those thoughts were slowly giving way to the whisper of the Force inside of him, telling him that it was true, it was absolutely true, Palpatine was an enemy and had been an enemy this whole time, that it was right in front of their faces the whole time and Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to see it, not until now, not until it was too late…

He nodded weakly. “It’s true.”

If he was being honest with himself—really, truly honest with himself—what Obi-Wan really wanted to do at the moment was curl into a ball and cry for the next month or two. But he couldn’t; not just because he had duties and responsibilities, but because he couldn’t let anyone see him fall apart. He had to hide his grief, his fear, his emotions in general, because if the Council saw any sign of weakness they would take Anakin away from him, he was sure of it. They would think that he wasn’t ready. He had to appear collected, strong, stable, he had to set an example for Anakin, he—

“Stop that,” Halcyon said.

“Stop what?” Obi-Wan asked.

Halcyon was frowning at him, mostly in irritation. “You’re shutting down. Shoving all of your emotions off somewhere where you don’t have to deal with them. You’ve been doing that since you came back from Naboo, and you need to cut it out.”

“I am attempting,” Obi-Wan said, feeling his jaw clench up, “to have mastery over my emotions, not—”

“Repression isn’t mastery of _anything._ You just got the shock of your life—have a _reaction_ to it, for crying out loud.”

“What do you think I was just doing while you were out in the corridor?” Obi-Wan demanded.

“That’s exactly what I’m getting at: you’re doing the same thing all the time in your head, just slamming the door shut and keeping it hidden. That’s not coping, that’s just putting it off until some future point when you _can’t_ control it or keep it hidden, which is a recipe for disaster. You have a kid—a Padawan now, I mean—you have to be a role model for him—”

“Oh really?” Obi-Wan snapped. “Am I supposed to act like _you,_ then? Throwing temper tantrums like a youngling, having no control whatsoever, breaking who knows how many rules? Is _that_ what you mean by being a role model?”

“Anakin is _nine,_ Obi-Wan! He had a childhood that was traumatic _at best,_ and acting like he’s not supposed to have any feelings about it is going to wreck him or, at the very least, drive him away.” He leaned in. “And we can’t let that happen. Especially knowing what we know now.”

“It’s the first line of the Code, Halcyon: _there is no emotion, there is_ —”

“Oh, _bantha poodoo!_ ” Halcyon shouted, standing up and slamming a fist against the wall. He glared at Obi-Wan. “You want to know what I think? I think that line is demanding something impossible. Maybe there are some species out there that can just _get rid_ of their emotions, but not humans. Or Wookiees, or Twi’leks, or Mon Cals, or pretty much _anyone_ _._ We’re all shooting ourselves in the foot, pretending like it’s simple and then shaming anyone who can’t lie well enough.” He seethed for a moment, and then continued in a slightly quieter, but still intense, tone of voice: “You feel sad about Qui-Gon? Angry that the man his killer served is still out there? _Good._ You cared about him, that’s why you’re feeling that way. You’re terrified that something is going to happen to Anakin, you’re worried that the Council is going to take him away from you? _Good!_ That means you care about him!”

“We’re supposed to be above all that!” Obi-Wan yelled back, somehow back on his feet. “Master Windu said that you had issues with attachments, but I never expected it to be _this_ bad—you’re talking like a heretic, you don’t even sound like a Jedi! Is this what you’ve been hiding from the Council? That you’re breaking the rules left and right, sneering at the Code, hiding away on Corellia—”

Before Halcyon could reply, their ship exited hyperspace. The green and blue world of Naboo filled the window of the cockpit, somehow stepping between the two Jedi like a mediator.

For all of their yelling, Halcyon was now reasonably calm. “My secrets,” he said quietly, “are just that: _my_ secrets. It has nothing to do with you or Anakin.” He picked up the sound masking device but did not turn it off. “If you ever need to know, then I’ll tell you, but right now we have to focus on Anakin. Chosen One or not, he’s probably one of the most important kids in the galaxy right now.”

Obi-Wan was still breathing harder than he should be, but his anger had mostly subsided. In its place was exhaustion. “There’s a Sith Lord in charge of the Republic,” he said. “What are we supposed to do about that?”

Halcyon shook his head. “I don’t know yet. But for now, it can wait.” He switched off the device and jerked his head in the direction of the ship’s controls. “Do you want to take us down to Theed, or should I do it?”

“I think I need to lie down for a minute,” Obi-Wan admitted. He hoped that he would be able to stand up again afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obiwan.exe has encountered an error and needs to close. Or nap. Or something.


	14. The Realm of Possibility

After a day on Tatooine and a long hyperspace journey before that, Naboo was practically paradise. Temperate climate, modern cities, _water_ —stepping off of that ship was a relief, not just because it put an end to Obi-Wan’s accusations of heresy.

Nejaa groaned silently. He knew that Obi-Wan wouldn’t take it well; he hadn’t taken it well himself, and he didn’t have the same history with the Sith that Obi-Wan did. Of course he would feel upset and betrayed. Of _course_ he would lash out.

Maybe laying into Obi-Wan about his unhealthy emotional habits at the same time was a step too far, Nejaa wondered.

But no, even though Nejaa brought it up at a less-than-ideal moment, the fact remained that Obi-Wan had a massive issue with showing anything that might be perceived as weakness. His entire world had been upended in the span of only a few months and he wasn’t coping. The Jedi Order had a lot to answer for, as far as supporting its members after traumatic events went, in Nejaa’s opinion. He appreciated Mace asking about Obi-Wan’s state of mind when he made his report on Naboo to the Council, but Nejaa knew from experience that only one kind of answer would be acceptable, so he fudged the truth. He wasn’t proud of it, but he knew as well as Obi-Wan did that if the Council thought he was handling his grief with anything other than complete stoicism, they wouldn’t let him train Anakin.

It was a cold, uncaring way of doing things, and if disagreeing with that made Nejaa a heretic, so be it. At least he wasn’t a Sith.

 _A Sith._ Naboo certainly looked like a paradise, but any hope Nejaa had of enjoying it was ruined by the knowledge that this was where all of the horror started, long ago. Where Shmi Skywalker had been apprenticed to a monster, one who hid in plain sight…

Nejaa shivered. It was impossible not to think about Palpatine here. He had grown up here, risen to power here, and put this otherwise unremarkable Outer Rim planet at the center of galactic politics. And somehow, along the way, he became the heir to a Force tradition that had once brought the galaxy to its knees and the Jedi to the brink of extinction.

And might do so again, if he wasn't stopped.

But how? What could stop someone who was already the most powerful person in the Republic?

Shmi said that the only way to stop Palpatine was to trap him.

Nejaa could name nearly twenty spice smuggling rings, eight extortion rackets, fifteen large-scale distributors of stolen property, three hostage situations, twenty-four diversified criminal syndicates, and countless other thieves, murderers, con men, and other menaces that he had taken down on Corellia over the last dozen or so years. Sometimes they had to be hunted… other times they needed to be trapped.

He knew that he wouldn't stand a chance in a direct fight against a Dark Lord of the Sith. But _trapping_ one… he might be able to do that.

Every investigation started with gathering information, and here he was, on the target's homeworld. He should make the most of the opportunity.

But first, he had to get through whatever stupid ceremony he had been sent here to attend.

* * *

Nejaa could say this for the Naboo people: they were extremely patient. He was pretty sure that Queen Amidala hadn't moved a muscle in over twenty minutes.

On the other hand, from what he was picking up through the Force, even she was growing more than a little restless as the speeches droned on.

He still hadn't figured out what this gathering was even about: the commemoration of the establishment of some alliance that laid the foundation for some other agreement that, through a sequence of events that he certainly couldn't follow, made Naboo the shining jewel of the Republic that it was today. Nejaa read the statement provided by the Council, extending the Order's congratulations and best wishes (not that Naboo needed it), and then zoned out for everything that happened after that.

He used the time to puzzle out why in the Five Worlds Palpatine wanted to send him here. Each theory was more unsettling than the last.

One possibility was to send a message to the Jedi Council that despite their claims to self-governance, Palpatine was still able to exercise authority over the Order's internal affairs. The Council typically assigned diplomats to attend functions like these, and Palpatine just demonstrated that he could override those decisions.

Another possibility was to indicate that he was doing Nejaa a favor. Nejaa hadn't made a secret of the fact that he was unhappy being stuck on Coruscant, and so Palpatine arranged for an opportunity to leave. It also included the unspoken offer of more favors in the future, provided Nejaa continued to be useful to the Chancellor.

That brought a related scenario to mind, one that caused him to shudder when he considered it. Nejaa had also made no effort to disguise his frustration with the Jedi Council and, now that he thought about it, he realized that Palpatine had been encouraging those feelings. During their first meeting, he had implied that the Council had covered up the deaths of two children, which sent Nejaa into a paranoid spiral that had lasted for a day or two.

He hadn't been able to bring himself to confirm whether or not it was true. He didn't want to consider the possibility that it had happened. Or the possibility that the Council was lying to him.

Nejaa looked back over all of those meetings with the Chancellor and noticed what he hadn't before: everything Nejaa told him about the Jedi's beliefs and rules, Palpatine would question in such a way that, over time, Nejaa found his own doubts growing. His views on the Code had always been a little flexible, and he certainly believed what he told Obi-Wan about emotions and attachments, but other things had recently felt like they were slowly warping. He had assumed that it was related to his growing frustration at being away from home… but what if it wasn't?

Every time Nejaa left the Senate building, he felt just a little more irritated about having to return to the Temple. He looked forward to their next meeting just a little more each time. He was just a little more reluctant to leave.

He was being seduced. Slowly, so subtly that Nejaa didn't even realize that it was happening, Palpatine was trying to shift his loyalties. Maybe he just wanted a Jedi to manipulate, an unwitting pawn, a way to cause chaos within the Order… but Palpatine had also recently lost his apprentice.

Vomiting at a public ceremony would probably be rude, Nejaa reminded himself. His stomach churned anyway.

The final possibility was what terrified him the most: by giving Nejaa an excuse to leave Coruscant, Palpatine knew that Nejaa would almost certainly take the opportunity to visit Corellia. And there was the very strong possibility that, if Nejaa went home for a visit, Palpatine would be able to find out _why._ He could find out about Valin and Scerra and Rostek, something that would give him an incredible amount of leverage over Nejaa: he could threaten to get Nejaa expelled from the Order, he could threaten to ruin Rostek and Scerra's careers, he could threaten to take Valin away, he could even threaten to hurt or kill them. Palpatine was a Sith; he would have no reason to hesitate.

All of Nejaa's worst fears could come true. Everything he had ever worked for could come crashing down around him. Everyone he had ever loved could be stolen away from him. And Nejaa knew that he would do _anything_ to keep that from happening.

He would even serve a Sith Lord.

His hands were tucked inside the sleeves of his robes, and Nejaa could feel them curling into fists. He hadn't let the Jedi keep him from having a family; he wouldn't let the Sith do that either. He wouldn't be terrified into letting them go. He wouldn't let Palpatine keep him from them.

He would still find a way to go home while still keeping them safe. He had always been careful and he would continue to be careful. He could keep Palpatine from finding out.

He had to.

* * *

Nejaa met several high-level members of the Naboo Security Forces during the investigation, and decided that they would be the best people to approach about getting the kind of access he needed in order to gather information on Palpatine. Without naming names, of course.

When he mentioned this plan to Obi-Wan after the ceremony came to its (merciful) conclusion, the Jedi Knight had a suggestion that he hadn’t considered:

“Why don’t you ask Queen Amidala for access to the Royal Archives?” Obi-Wan said, gesturing in the direction of Naboo’s young monarch, who Anakin had been watching with a completely transfixed expression since the moment they arrived.

“Why would she let me…” Nejaa began to ask, before he saw the annoyed look on Obi-Wan’s face and remembered. “Oh, right. She’s Padmé.” As part of his investigation into Qui-Gon’s death, he had talked to Padmé in her guise as one of Amidala’s handmaidens and was only informed later that she was, in fact, the monarch herself. It was difficult to remember that they were the same person. Wearing all the makeup and gowns and other finery, she almost looked like a completely different species.

She also spoke differently, something he had forgotten until he approached her to ask about the Archives. Her voice was slower, more precise, even lower in pitch. Being Amidala sounded exhausting, in Nejaa’s opinion, and he was once again impressed by the fact that all of these responsibilities rested on the shoulders of a teenage girl.

“Your presence here on Naboo is most welcome, Master Jedi,” she said when he asked. “We have not forgotten your assistance here in the aftermath of our recent crisis.” She signaled to one of the orange-robed women standing nearby. “My handmaiden Eirtaé will escort you to a location where you can conduct your research.”

“Thank you for your generosity, Your Highness,” Nejaa said with an awkward bow, as usual feeling like an uncultured nerfherder and wishing that Rostek was here to tell him what to say.

* * *

In Nejaa’s experience, every library or archive looked more or less the same. The Naboo Royal Archives were no different: the same smell, the same kind of hush, the same feeling of precision and order. It probably even had its own ersatz version of Jocasta Nu.

Any information he could find on Sheev Palpatine was annoyingly banal and probably hadn't even required a trip to the Archives at all. Not that Nejaa expected to find some kind of “History of the Dark Side” materials or anything, but even information about his youth might have been helpful. Instead, it was all the usual sort of political hagiography that typically surrounded the powerful and famous: a young man with no family, no prospects, making his way to the top of galactic politics through sheer brilliance and hard work.

And hidden Force powers, apparently.

Nejaa wasn’t _that_ disappointed; obviously Palpatine would have taken steps to ensure that nothing out of the ordinary existed in the records. Besides, there was something else that Nejaa wanted to know.

He pulled up everything he could find on the reign of King Tapalo. Specifically, the individuals who served as his bodyguards and aides.

Their identities weren’t secret, merely obscure. That was fine; Nejaa could work with obscure. It took a long time of poring over holos and other material, however, before he found her.

Life on Tatooine had aged her quite a bit, but those were definitely her features. The most significant change was in her eyes. The Shmi Skywalker that he met possessed a rock-solid calm that seemed able to weather anything. The young woman she had been, Lakshmi Dardai, practically crackled with energy: pride, ambition, and some indefinable forward momentum that gave one the impression that she was about to jump out of the holo and manifest in real life.

It was a look that Nejaa had seen in Anakin’s eyes more than a few times.

Like Palpatine, she had come up from practically nothing: attended a prestigious school in Theed on a merit scholarship, organized protests against controversial local legislation, participated in the Apprentice Legislature for a year, graduated early, and became a royal handmaiden at the age of sixteen. Following the end of Tapalo’s reign, she worked as a campaign manager for an up-and-coming candidate for Senate: Sheev Palpatine.

Had they met before that? Was she already his apprentice? ( _‘Acolyte’_ she had said… was there a distinction?) Regardless, their association lasted for at least five years, with her taking on increasing responsibilities but moving further and further from the public eye.

Until almost ten years ago, when Lakshmi Dardai died in a shuttle explosion along with three other members of Palpatine’s Senatorial staff.

There was no next of kin. No funeral. Barely a mention aside from being named in a general press release from Palpatine’s office.

She faked her death and escaped, killing three other people in the process. Did Palpatine ever suspect that she had survived? Did he know why she ran? Those were questions that Nejaa realized he would never get the answers to, not unless the plan went completely out of control.

The question that he might have gotten the answer to, that he might _still_ get the answer to, was why. Why had she apprenticed herself to a Sith Lord? Why had she chosen the Dark Side? And why— _how,_ more accurately—did she walk away from it? As far as Nejaa knew, once you started down the dark path, it would forever dominate your destiny. There was no coming back from the Dark Side. And yet, somehow, she had; not to the Light Side, but to some liminal space in between the two sides. He didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be possible.

But for now, solving the mystery of Shmi Skywalker, formerly Lakshmi Dardai, would have to wait until after Palpatine was defeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a friend who is as obsessed with Star Wars as I am, and we've had some really awesome conversations about prequel-era stuff (she's written some of the best Padmé POV fiction I've ever read and I'm _mad_ that it's not posted anywhere so I can share it). One of the things we chatted about was how a lot of Naboo stuff is coded as South Asian (her family is from India), especially a lot of the names. She was the one who suggested the name for Shmi.


	15. Okay (Most of the Time)

She still looked like an angel.

Anakin was sad to leave Tatooine but seeing Padmé again almost made up for it. She was dressed up like a Queen—which was sort of funny in a way, like the sort of thing he’d heard in stories—but it was still her, still the first free person he met who had looked at him like he was something other than a slave. Still the first free person he’d ever risked himself for, who he’d ever gone out of his way to help, who ever _thanked_ him. And, unlike Qui-Gon, she hadn’t looked at him and just seen a little kid.

He looked at her and saw freedom.

And now, here they both were: free, safe… and kind of bored.

Anakin was trying to keep himself occupied by practicing his observation skills but there were only so many times he could stare at someone’s ceremonial robes before it got old. However, visual observation wasn’t the only thing he could practice.

He reached out to the Force slowly, carefully, trying to avoid attracting attention. He had been working on that lately: trying to be sneaky when he was using the Force so that other Jedi wouldn't notice. He figured it could come in handy at some point; being sneaky had certainly been helpful back when he lived on Tatooine.

It _did_ sort of feel like tiptoeing: keeping his distance, keeping quiet, observing without letting anyone know that they were being watched. He hesitantly brushed up against Obi-Wan’s presence in the Force and was pleased to discover that he hadn’t been noticed: Obi-Wan was too busy trying to pay attention to the speeches. He next tried it with Master Halcyon, who it turned out wasn’t paying attention to what was going on at all and whose thoughts were going around in rapid circles. Something about politics and the Jedi Council; it sounded really boring. Anakin probably could have tried to eavesdrop, but he was pretty sure that Master Halcyon would notice if he went any further into his thoughts than he had already.

He lightly skimmed the surface of the minds of the people nearby; most of them were tuning out the events around them and either thinking about something else entirely or just struggling not to fall asleep. One mind, however, stood out in the Force like a light, and that was where he focused his attention.

Padmé’s face hadn’t shown any expression since the ceremony began, but her thoughts were definitely not like that at all. In fact, she was humming some song in her head, occasionally accompanied by lyrics but only sporadically; Anakin suspected it was a song that she didn’t really know the words to. He could sense her trying not to think about her body, which was starting to ache from holding it in one position for so long.

He wasn’t sure if what he was about to try was even possible, but it wasn’t as though he had anything better to do. He just hoped that Padmé wouldn’t be upset.

Anakin pictured himself holding up a finger and, doing his best to exercise the kind of internal control that he hoped Obi-Wan would be proud of, gave Padmé’s mind a gentle but deliberate _poke._

He felt her surprise. _Ani?_

 _Hi,_ he said hesitantly.

 _Are you in my thoughts?_ she asked.

_Yeah… I think. Is that okay? I can stop._

He sensed some uneasiness from her. _How much of my mind are you reading right now?_

 _Almost nothing,_ he hurried to reassure her. _Just the surface. Like the loudest voice inside your head. But I can leave if you want._

 _No, that’s okay,_ she said, her wariness replaced by relief. _I could use the distraction._

 _Is it usually this boring?_ he asked, hoping he wasn’t being offensive or anything.

 _Sometimes,_ she admitted. _But I have to be here; it’s one of my duties as Queen._

_Did you ever think about making one of your doubles take your place while you go do something else?_

It didn’t show on her face, but he could feel her laughing. _Well,_ now _I’m tempted to._

 _I mean, that’s what I’d do if I had a bunch of people who could pretend to be me._ He pictured leaving a decoy Anakin behind with Obi-Wan to learn galactic history while he went off and practiced dueling.

Padmé laughed again. _It sounds like you have some boring duties as well._

 _Yeah, sometimes,_ he admitted. Some part of him glowed a little at the idea of having something in common with Padmé. _Hey, how do you stand so still for this long?_

Anakin sensed something that might have been a shrug. _Practice, mostly,_ she said. _And knowing that the second this is all over, I can take all this stuff off and move around like a normal person again._

 _Like the real Padmé,_ he said.

She paused and he wasn’t sure why. _Yes,_ she finally said. _I suppose it does feel sometimes like Amidala is just a costume I put on… but I’m not sure I want it to be like that._

 _Why?_ he asked.

_Because, when I’m Amidala, I’m doing things that are important. I mean, I’m ruling a planet, I had a whole election that I had to win in order to do that, and if Amidala wasn’t me then what was the point?_

_Oh,_ Anakin said, feeling suddenly embarrassed. _I didn’t mean it that way._

 _It’s okay, Ani, I know you didn’t,_ she said. She didn’t seem mad at him, at least. _It’s just weird sometimes. I don’t always like being Queen, and then I feel guilty because it feels like I_ should _always like it._

 _And then you feel like you’re being ungrateful,_ Anakin said. _I feel that way about the Jedi. Like if I was a really good Jedi, I’d be happy all the time, but sometimes I’m not happy. Sometimes it’s really frustrating. And sometimes I just want to quit and go home._

 _Me too,_ Padmé said.

 _But I guess we can’t,_ he said. He didn’t even really feel sad about it.

Neither did she; he could feel her smile a little. _We’ve plotted our course._

 _No turning back now,_ he replied.

 _Ani?_ she asked, sounding a little hesitant, _what do you feel like most of the time? Are you okay?_

He thought about it. Thought about all the other things he might do instead of being a Jedi. If he could pick anything else to do.

He would still want to be a Jedi. _Most of the time, I’m okay. I guess nobody’s okay_ all _the time._

 _That would be pretty creepy if they were, actually,_ she said. He caught a mental image of her crossing her eyes and smiling way too wide and he had to struggle to keep a straight face.

 _What was that song you were humming earlier?_ he asked.

 _Oh,_ she said, and he sensed a slight flush of embarrassment from her, _it’s some glimmik song I’ve had stuck in my head for days now._

_Can I hear it?_

_It’s really silly,_ she protested.

_We don’t have a lot of music at the Jedi Temple, you know._

_I’ll play it for you later. You’re not leaving right after this, are you?_

_I don’t think so,_ he said. Obi-Wan and Master Halcyon had been too busy talking to each other on the trip from Tatooine to tell Anakin what was going on. _And if we are, you should just order us to stay. You_ are _the Queen, you know._

She laughed. _Okay. After all this is over, give me an hour to wrap some things up and then change into more comfortable clothes. I’ll send one of my handmaidens to get you._

 _Is that handmaiden’s name Padmé?_ he asked.

 _Well, now you ruined the surprise,_ she said, pretending to sound annoyed.

* * *

“There's so much stuff that's _alive_ here,” Anakin said. “I forgot about that.”

“Well, the last time you were here, there was a battle going on,” Padmé pointed out.

“You forgot when we came back for the victory celebration,” Anakin said, feeling a little hurt. _He_ remembered it.

“Oh, you're right,” she said. “I'm sorry, everything kind of blurred together after the Trade Federation left.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the stone barrier that marked the edge of the Palace roof. “I wish we'd had time to talk back then. Everything just got so busy.” She frowned out at the view of the city, which was beginning to shift from day into night. “It never really _stopped_ being busy, actually.”

“Even during the boring stuff?” he asked.

She sighed. “ _Especially_ during the boring stuff.” For a moment, she looked really far away and Anakin remembered that she was older than he was. It hadn't seemed that way when they were talking through the Force earlier. Maybe he was older in his head, or she was younger in her head, or maybe it didn't matter so much with the Force. He didn't know. He was pretty sure that Obi-Wan didn't know either. Maybe Master Halcyon did. He said he had a wife…

Anakin suddenly realized where his thoughts were going and felt extremely silly. He knew it was called a crush. About a year ago, Kitster had been acting really stupid around some girl whose mother ran a fabric stall. Free kids didn't talk to slave kids, their parents didn't let them (“acting like it's contagious or something,” he once overheard someone grumble), but this girl would smile at Kitster sometimes and then he would just _hang around_ even when it got him in trouble. Anakin didn't know exactly what happened next but one day Kitster stopped going near there and was really sad and didn't want to talk about her anymore.

Anakin was pretty sure that it was a smaller distance between a slave boy and a free girl than the distance between a Queen and a kid like him. And Jedi weren't supposed to do those things anyway, even if it was obvious that Master Halcyon didn't follow that rule.

So maybe he _would_ ask Master Halcyon about it at some point.

“How was Tatooine?” she asked, bringing the glow of her attention back to him. He proceeded to tell Padmé about finishing the deactivator and using it on Kitster and all the ways it was going to change everything. He told her how his mother was free and planning to help a lot of people… and then he found his chest tightening the same way it had when he said goodbye.

He hadn't planned to tell Padmé this part but he found himself saying it anyway: “Something bad happened while we were there. I don't know what it was, but I know it was bad. She wouldn't tell me.”

“Is she all right?” Padmé sounded worried.

“I think so?” Anakin still wasn't sure about that part. She _acted_ fine, but he also knew that she sometimes acted fine when she wasn't. “But something happened that scared Master Halcyon and neither of them would tell me what it was about.”

He hadn't been able to listen in on whatever happened on the trip from Tatooine to Naboo, but he also knew that it had scared Obi-Wan too. And _nothing_ scared Obi-Wan. Both of his mentors were terrified and it was because of something his mother told them.

He hadn't meant to say this part either but apparently his mouth was making all sorts of decisions right now without consulting him: “Padmé, do you think there's something wrong with me?”

She still looked worried but now it was for him. “Absolutely not, Anakin,” she said, a sudden ferocity in her voice. “What gave you that idea?”

“They were talking about something. What else could it have been about other than me?”

“Ani,” she said, placing her hand on his, “do you trust your mother?”

He nodded.

“Do you trust Obi-Wan? Do you trust Master Halcyon?”

He nodded again.

“Then I think you can trust them to know how to help you. Even if it is something about you—which you don't know for sure—that doesn't mean that there's anything _wrong_ with you.” She squeezed his hand. “Okay?”

He still wasn't entirely reassured, but he did feel a little better. “Okay.”

They stood in silence for a little while, watching the city lights twinkling like stars.

He said one more thing he hadn't expected: “I don't want anyone to be afraid of me.”

“I'm not afraid of you,” Padmé said softly. “I could never be afraid of you.”

From anyone else, it might have sounded patronizing or dismissive. But from Padmé, it was the most comforting thing he had ever heard.


	16. Opening the Door

Obi-Wan supposed that there were worse places he could be right after discovering that the Chancellor of the Republic was a Dark Lord of the Sith than the planet where his entire life started to unravel, but that hypothetical place would probably have to be the generator room itself, featuring Palpatine and a life-sized holo of Qui-Gon Jinn’s death.

Having to stand in public at this ceremony and pretend to be fine almost made it better, though. Halcyon’s accusations back on the ship… well, he wasn’t wrong. It had always been like that: his emotions were like a room with a loud noise or an irritating smell and, if he wanted to, he could leave the room and shut the door behind him. It had always worked.

Obi-Wan kept his face still and did his best to focus on the speeches.

After the ceremony, everyone scattered: Halcyon to the Royal Archives and Anakin to wait for Padmé. Obi-Wan had planned to go back to the ship, but instead found himself wandering around Theed, keeping the hood of his cloak up and his eyes on the ground in front of him.

He didn’t realize what he was doing at first. It took a lot of steps, passing through doorways leading inside and then outside again, before he recognized that feeling for what it was: he was looking for something.

Somebody should have stopped him before he got this far inside. No one should be able to just walk into the city’s main power generator plant, especially one attached to the Royal Palace, but Obi-Wan had done exactly that.

Of course he would end up back here. He was looking for Qui-Gon.

Obi-Wan stood inside the generator room where his Master had died, knowing that he was being foolish. The Force made all sorts of things possible, but he was fairly sure that ghosts were not one of them. Anything that Qui-Gon had to say to him, he said when he was alive.

_Don't center on your anxiety, Obi-Wan. Keep your concentration here and now where it belongs._

Things like that: pieces of wisdom, of advice, of reassurance, taught over the course of years spent at his side. Obi-Wan wondered if he had listened well enough, if he remembered everything, if he had paid enough attention.

_Be mindful of the living Force, my young Padawan._

There was nothing living here. The only ghosts were the ones in his own head.

He continued to wait. Qui-Gon wasn’t there, he knew that Qui-Gon wasn’t there, but this was the last place Qui-Gon had ever been.

_You feel sad about Qui-Gon? Angry that the man his killer served is still out there? Good!_

“I’m sorry…” Obi-Wan began to speak but stopped. Not because he knew he was alone or because he felt silly, but because those weren’t the right words.

_You cared about him, that’s why you’re feeling that way!_

Inside his mind, inside his heart, inside whatever room in which he had locked away all of his emotions… Obi-Wan opened the door and let them out.

“I miss you,” he said finally. “Everything has been so much more difficult than I expected and I keep waiting for someone to tell me what to do.” He smiled ruefully. “Of course, some people _have,_ but it isn’t them that I want to hear from… it’s you. I keep wondering, every single day, what you would do in this or that situation, or what advice you would give me, or even what new way you had found to utterly vex the Council.”

Obi-Wan took a seat on the floor. The energy shields flickered on and off in a regular pattern. “There's another Sith out there now,” he said quietly, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. He didn't think anyone could listen in—the recordings of the duel had been without sound—but the words he was saying felt so volatile that he worried they would explode if he spoke them too loudly. “I wonder what you would have thought about that, especially if you knew who it was. I wonder what you would have done.” He rested his head in his hands, arms propped up on his knees. “Because I have no idea what to do.”

“You liked driving the Council crazy, you liked being thought of as a heretic, you were an… _unconventional_ Jedi, as Master Windu put it, so I suppose you might not have minded me saying this.” He took a deep breath and felt something catch in his throat. “I loved you.” He shut his eyes, fighting back tears. “And I wish, more than anything, that you would come back.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

Startled, Obi-Wan turned to look. There was no one there.

His comlink buzzed, startling him again.

Answering it, he heard Halcyon's voice. “I've got Anakin. Ready to head out?”

Obi-Wan took one more look around the empty generator room. He was alone— _still_ alone, he tried to tell himself. “Yes,” he said at last. “I'll meet you back at the ship.”

* * *

He wasn’t surprised that their next stop was Corellia.

“I mean, really, at this point the Council’s going to _expect_ me to go,” Halcyon said as they boarded. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”

“Assuming it’s still possible for you to disappoint them any further,” Obi-Wan muttered.

“I heard that,” Halcyon said cheerfully. Obi-Wan followed Halcyon towards the cockpit, but as they neared the door, the Jedi Master turned and kept him from going any further.

“I have some things to take care of and I’ll need the cockpit to myself for a few minutes,” Halcyon said. He looked over Obi-Wan’s shoulder at the retreating form of Anakin, who was headed towards the rear of the ship. “In the meantime, go console your lovesick Padawan.”

“My _what?”_ Obi-Wan said, but the cockpit door had already closed in his face.

As he joined Anakin in the small seating area off of the cargo hold, Obi-Wan noticed that his apprentice _did_ look a little forlorn. He tried asking Anakin about how his time with Padmé had gone, but Anakin was not particularly forthcoming with details: “We just talked for awhile,” he said quietly. Obi-Wan noticed a blush growing on Anakin’s face and began to wonder if taking him along on this trip to Naboo had been a good idea after all.

“We’re going to Corellia next, right?” Anakin asked, rather obviously trying to change the subject.

“We are,” Obi-Wan sighed. “Hopefully it won’t take very long.”

Anakin’s expression, unexpectedly, became a tiny bit smug. “What is it?” Obi-Wan asked.

His Padawan smiled. “Nothing.”

Obi-Wan couldn’t help glaring. Apparently the whole ship was conspiring against him.

* * *

It took three hyperspace jumps for them to arrive, despite the planet lying directly along the Corellian Run—hence the name of the route—which implied that Halcyon was attempting to cover their tracks. More troubling was the fact that he had apparently altered the ship’s identification transponder to a different name.

“If… _certain people_ …” Halcyon explained quietly as he piloted them down to a spaceport in Coronet City, “…were to know where we were going, it would jeopardize more than a few things.”

“Is this dangerous?” Obi-Wan asked. They were already doing something illegal with the transponder. He had no idea what to expect.

Halcyon smiled. “Only for me,” he said. He took his eyes away from the spacelanes for a moment and looked at Obi-Wan. “We’re not just here for fun—well, I guess we _are_ , but we’re also here because I need to show you something.”

“The reason why you’re so determined to come back here, I assume?”

Halcyon turned back to watch the traffic. “The two of us are currently in on one of the biggest secrets in the galaxy. The thing I’ve been hiding seems a little trivial by comparison.” He gave a brief chuckle. “Besides, I _did_ say I would explain about the sound-masking device.”

“Anakin knows, doesn’t he?” Obi-Wan blurted out. “About what you’ve been hiding from the Council.”

“Some of it,” Halcyon said. “Not all of it. He figured it out—stumbled into it, really.”

He put down the ship in what appeared to be a privately-owned spaceport. The rest of the bay was empty, even of employees (“It’s not like we have anything to unload,” Halcyon pointed out), except for two figures waiting by the door, out of range of the ship’s exhaust.

Halcyon practically ran off the ship, barely waiting for the ship’s gangway to completely touch the ground. By the time Obi-Wan and Anakin followed him out, he was already halfway across the bay, running to meet a boy who looked to be around Anakin’s age.

As Halcyon swept the boy up in his arms, Obi-Wan could hear the latter’s protests: “I’m too big to be picked up!”

“You forget, little one: your father has superpowers,” Halcyon said, laughing. “Bet I could pick up you _and_ the landspeeder you rode in on.”

_Father?_

“Well, when am _I_ going to learn that?” the boy demanded as Halcyon set him down. Now Obi-Wan could see him a bit better: he wasn’t Anakin’s age exactly—probably one or two years older. His dark hair was more wavy and his skin was a few shades darker than Halcyon’s… but the rest of his features were startlingly similar, especially his green eyes.

“We’ll work up to it,” Halcyon said. “Give me one more second,” he said to Obi-Wan and Anakin, and went to greet the other person who had been waiting for them and was now only a meter or two away.

The person in question was a tall man in his late-thirties, with ash blond hair cut in some kind of regulation way, either military or law enforcement.

And who was now locked in a rather… _intense_ embrace with Halcyon.

Obi-Wan had not thought it possible for this trip to get any more confusing.

When Halcyon turned back to look at the others, he actually looked a little nervous. “Well,” he said, trying to sound casual, “I guess it’s time for introductions. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight, and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker. And this,” he said, gesturing to the dark-haired boy and the man at his side, “is my son Valin and my husband, Rostek.”

_Son? Husband?_

“Nice to meet you,” Obi-Wan managed to say, still a little dazed.

Rostek shook his hand. “Nice to meet you as well—we’ve heard quite a bit about you and Anakin, actually.” He gave Obi-Wan a sympathetic look. “And, judging by your expression, I’m going to assume that Nejaa gave you absolutely no warning about what you were walking into here.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. Rostek turned to Halcyon with a look that was half affection and half glare. Halcyon attempted to look innocent and, as usual, failed utterly.

Meanwhile, Anakin and Valin appeared to be warily sizing one another up. Noticing the pause in the conversation, Anakin said to Halcyon, “I thought you said you had a wife.”

“I do,” Halcyon said. He glanced at his husband. “Speaking of which, where _is_ Scerra?”

“She’s at home,” Rostek said. “The landspeeder only holds five people, remember?”

“And you won the coin toss?”

“Of course I won the coin toss,” Rostek said, grinning. “Now, come on, let’s not keep her waiting.”

* * *

Only a few days ago, Obi-Wan had been on Coruscant, where the most exciting thing in his life involved watching his obnoxious colleague attempt to mind-trick drunks into knocking themselves unconscious.

Now he had managed to stumble into the heart of a terrifying galactic cover-up, learned that his Padawan’s mother was a former Sith acolyte who had somehow _created_ her son from the Force itself, gone looking for a ghost (and wasn't entirely convinced that he hadn't found one), and was now sitting in the kitchen of a house occupied by the aforementioned colleague, his husband, his wife, and his _child._

There was not a meditation technique in existence that could help Obi-Wan cope with all of these revelations at once.

How in the _Force_ had Halcyon managed to keep this a secret all these years? He was the least subtle person Obi-Wan had ever met.

Anakin seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing, which was not unexpected seeing as he apparently already _knew._ He and Valin were still staring at one another suspiciously, as if waiting for the other one to attack, and said nothing. Meanwhile, Halcyon had been pressed into helping Rostek make dinner, while Scerra apparently kept trying to leave the kitchen to go retrieve something, only to stop at the door to respond to the latest thing that Halcyon had said.

It might have been the loudest room Obi-Wan had ever been in since the last time he visited the younglings’ creche. Halcyon and his wife did not so much converse as talk over one another simultaneously, somehow still managing to understand what the other one was saying. Rostek was able to interject when necessary, but for the most part seemed content to watch the mayhem from a distance, a look of amusement on his face.

“What do you _mean_ you didn’t tell Obi-Wan?” Scerra demanded. The bright lights of the kitchen picked up the copper highlights in her curly dark hair, causing it to almost glow against the deep brown of her skin. “You had a flight of how long and it, what, never came up?”

“I thought it would just be easier to show him and Anakin,” Halcyon said, looking a little sheepish.

“You mean you wanted it to be as dramatic a reveal as possible,” Rostek pointed out. He raised an eyebrow in Obi-Wan’s direction. “Tell me, exactly how many blaster shots did he get hit with before you found out that he could absorb energy?”

“About six,” Anakin piped up.

“With me, he took an entire bowcaster bolt to the chest and still broke his shoulder in the process,” Rostek said. He was chopping some kind of vegetable that Obi-Wan didn’t recognize; he wasn’t that familiar with Corellian cuisine.

“But I didn’t die,” Halcyon protested. He frowned. “Is this entire trip just going to be you and Obi-Wan comparing stories about my exploits?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Scerra said. “How else did you think we were going to bond?”

“A shared love of justice?” Halcyon asked hopefully.

“I’m sure we’ll get to that eventually, dear,” Scerra said. She gave Obi-Wan and Anakin a pat on the shoulder each. “Welcome to the family, you two.”


	17. Delusions of Grandeur

Nejaa missed his home, he missed his family, and he missed his duties. But if he was being truly honest with himself, what he _really_ missed was his bed.

And the people in it, of course.

It must be after midnight by now, he thought to himself. He didn’t bother to check the chrono on the nightstand, which would have involved sitting up and _that_ would have involved untangling himself from between his spouses, because tonight Nejaa was sleeping in the middle.

He loved being in the middle.

 _That_ was the thing he missed the most while away from home—not the sex (though he certainly missed that quite a bit) or spending time with his son or even the damn bed—he missed being touched. Most of the time, Jedi only really experienced any kind of physical contact while doing things like sparring, and not even then if it was with lightsabers. Younglings sometimes held hands but they grew out of that habit quickly. Some of the more adventurous Padawans occasionally fooled around with one another, but such things were only one-time incidents that were never talked of again. Older Jedi never did those things at all.

Nejaa had been starved for touch all his life before he met Rostek and Scerra. Stuck on Coruscant, he felt that hunger even more keenly now than he did in his youth, because now he knew what he was missing.

And if wanting to be nourished made him a heretic, so be it. If he had done what he was supposed to do as a Jedi, he would have been miserable.

Instead, he was here and _happy._ Nejaa buried his face in Scerra's hair, breathing in the scent of her shampoo and, underneath that, the faint smell of sweat on the back of her neck. On his other side was Rostek, long legs brushing against his own, with hair that was (to Nejaa's great satisfaction) quite thoroughly in disarray. It was Scerra who had pointed out, long ago, that part of Rostek's appeal was in the fun of messing him up.

Nejaa lay there and listened to them breathe… which was when he realized that neither of them were asleep.

Might as well use the opportunity. “Hey,” he said softly, “can I talk to you both about something?”

“Of course,” Rostek said. Scerra nodded while murmuring her own assent.

“So, you know that I've spent pretty much my entire life learning mental discipline of one sort of another: meditation, mastery over my emotions, focusing—”

“Still working on that one, dear,” Scerra said.

Nejaa laughed softly. “It's a process, yes. But I still wonder… Jedi are just as susceptible to things like paranoia, delusions, and other issues, right? I mean, we're not _that_ different.”

“Stands to reason,” Scerra confirmed. “Why do you ask?”

“Because what I'm about to tell you is going to sound completely crazy,” Nejaa said. He braced himself. “The man currently running the Republic is a sadistic, evil murderer who might very well end up destroying the galaxy in the process… and I'm one of only a handful of people who knows what he's really capable of.”

There was a pause while his words sunk in. Then Scerra said, “I _knew_ there was a reason I didn't like that guy.”

“Definitely acts far too mild for someone who spent that long mired in Republic politics,” Rostek agreed.

“I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you would both take a sinister galaxy-spanning conspiracy in stride,” Nejaa said, relieved.

“What are you going to do?” Scerra asked, rolling over to face him.

“Uncover it, eventually. Get enough evidence that he won't be able to manipulate his way out of it. Trap him, basically.”

“Do the Jedi know what's going on?” Scerra's expression was one mainly of concern, but Nejaa could also see her mind working on a possible solution.

Which was why he couldn't help wincing. “They don't,” he said. “They _can't,_ actually. Not until I have proof. Not until I'm sure we can actually do something about it. Otherwise, it's going to look like the Order just launched a coup.”

He felt his heart rate increase. Rostek put his arms around him. “You're afraid,” his husband said.

Nejaa almost laughed, not because it was funny but because it was far too accurate. “I'm _terrified._ I'm already keeping so many secrets and now I have to keep the biggest one of all. I'm hopelessly outmatched, I don't know what to do, and if I think about it for too long I'm going to fall apart. Obi-Wan knows too and he's only three steps away from being completely catatonic; I keep trying to piss him off because otherwise we're both going to lose our minds.”

“Hence the ridiculous drama that you unleashed on him today,” Rostek said.

“I mean, also because the look on his face was hilarious,” Nejaa admitted.

“Didn't you say he killed a Sith in a duel?” Scerra asked. “I'm not sure you want to push that boy any further toward the edge. _Especially_ if it's primarily for your own amusement.”

“In other words, please refrain from being a total ass just because you're not feeling well,” Rostek said.

“Okay, okay,” Nejaa grumbled, not really as annoyed as he sounded. The feeling of fear began to crawl over him again, though. “Listen,” he said softly, “I am going to do everything I can to protect you and Valin, but there is still a chance that Palpatine might find out about us. So please: if anyone offers you something that sounds too good to be true—a promotion, connections, gifts—turn it down, especially if it might be coming from someone off-world.”

“We'll be careful,” Scerra reassured him.

“We made it through the Avend case. This isn't so different,” Rostek said. He amended his statement: “Well, on a slightly grander scale this time, perhaps.”

About thirteen years ago, before Nejaa had even really stumbled into their lives, there had been a high-profile shooting of a Selonian refugee by a CorSec officer named Vir Avend. During a period of time when CorSec was already under fire for questionable interactions with non-human residents, the incident erupted into months of public protests before the case finally went to trial. Scerra was one of the attorneys for the prosecution and, while no one had been able to _prove_ that Rostek had provided evidence against Avend, it was still a very tense few years. Scerra's apartment was broken into and trashed at least three times, and the only reason why Rostek hadn't lost his job was because he had an impeccable record that even crooked CorSec officers couldn't entirely sully. They did, however, do their best to assign him the worst possible duties… such as tracking down and apprehending the nameless Jedi vigilante terrorizing Coronet City.

Even though Rostek eventually caught Nejaa (in more ways than one), having a group of law enforcement officers trying to ruin their lives had made them all very careful. Scerra was still only half-joking when she quipped that if she was ever pulled over for speeding, CorSec would probably find a way to send her to Kessel for it.

But they had gotten through it. Furthermore, the risks had been worth it: CorSec cleaned house, at least a little, and some of its worst offenders were gone; the outcome of the trial set a planetary standard for systemic discrimination cases; and the threatening notes finally stopped a few years ago. And, in the process, they created a family.

“I didn’t know about any of this when I left Coruscant,” Nejaa said, trying to snuggle closer to both of them but being thwarted by the fact that he couldn’t actually move in two directions at once. “This trip… it was because he intervened in Jedi matters and ordered them to send me. I’m only here with you now because he did me a favor.” He shuddered. “I don’t know what he’s trying to get from me, but he’s working _some_ kind of angle. And in order to figure out how to stop him, I’m probably going to have to let him keep trying.”

“So you think he might try to get to you through us,” Rostek said.

“I do. If I hadn’t found out what he was before I came here… if I hadn’t taken extra precautions…” He shuddered again. He didn’t want to think about that. “And when I get back, I’m probably going to have to go meet with him again and pretend to be _grateful_ —” He sighed. “Though I guess I _am_ grateful that I’m back here. This is what I wanted, after all. I even got to bring Obi-Wan and Anakin with me.”

“They’re nice boys,” Scerra said. “I’m glad that they’re here… though I’m a little worried about Valin.”

“Yeah, I saw how he was acting,” Nejaa said with another sigh. “I think he’s worried that I’ve replaced him with Anakin. I’ll spend some one-on-one time with him tomorrow… and hope that he and Anakin don’t smother each other in their sleep in the meantime.”

“Really?” Scerra asked. “Anakin seems like such a sweet kid.”

“He’s an instrumental part of an impending slave revolt on Tatooine and used to fly what are essentially supersonic missiles for _fun_ ,” Nejaa said. “If he _wasn’t_ so sweet, he would scare the hell out of me.” Thinking about Tatooine reminded him, though… “His mother is heading up efforts to help escaped slaves get off-world—”

“Please tell me that you passed along my contact information,” Scerra said, smiling.

“I did. Hopefully she’ll use it.” He honestly wasn’t sure whether Shmi would accept their help or not. Although she _had_ asked Mace Windu for assistance from the Jedi Order, that might have been because she saw them as a possible barrier between her and any chance of Palpatine finding out.

They lay in silence for awhile, each lost in their own thoughts.

At the Jedi Temple, Nejaa was often frustrated by the pervasive silence, which was why he took so many late-night walks. It wasn’t just missing the noises of a city, though: he missed the feeling of other people’s thoughts. Not that there _wasn’t_ any of that at the Temple—having that many Jedi in one place tended to give the Force a slight staticy sensation—but he had grown used to lying in bed at home and feeling two presences right next to him. He didn’t read their minds without permission, but through the Force he could sense their thought patterns, each moving in slightly different ways.

Scerra’s thoughts always reminded Nejaa of wind: currents of air, some of it in huge gusts that nearly knocked him over, others in tricky little zephyrs that seemed so gentle but could stir up everything it touched. Dizzying, keeping him on his toes, bringing with it the fragrance of far-away and imaginary lands.

If Scerra was like the air, then Rostek was like the earth: firm, steadfast, seemingly unyielding… but, under the surface, full of things that were alive. Roots that worked their way into even the narrowest cracks, delving deep while searching for truths and secrets, everything connected and growing.

In all of his years of knowing and loving them, Nejaa knew that he would never be able to fully grasp just how vast Scerra’s thoughts were or how deep Rostek’s thoughts went. It wouldn’t stop him from trying, which was really so much better than knowing for certain.

He slept in between them, feeling loved, touched, and known.

Everything else could wait until morning.

* * *

Nejaa didn’t dream very often, which made it so much more frustrating when he _did_ because they ended up being unnaturally vivid, as though his mind had been storing up the energy to use all at once.

He was in the middle of a sandstorm, although he knew that if it was a _real_ sandstorm it would have scraped his skin completely raw. The wind made the heat only slightly more bearable. He was fairly certain that he was back on Tatooine; nowhere else would have this much sand. The amount of it stinging his eyes, nose, and mouth made him wish yet again that his dreams were less intense. He could do without the excruciating detail.

Nejaa lifted his sleeve to wipe the accumulated sand from his nose and mouth and then yelled, “Okay! I’m here! What are you trying to show me?” He was pretty sure that this was some kind of Force dream; if that was the case, he was impatient for it to get to the point.

“Try to walk,” a voice said in his ear. Soft, difficult to hear over the sound of the wind, but he felt the warmth of breath on his skin.

Nejaa staggered forward, which proved surprisingly difficult: he was standing up to mid-calf in sand.

And, he realized, he was sinking even further down.

“Try to walk,” the voice said again.

“I’m trying,” Nejaa grumbled. It was getting even more difficult. Now knee-deep, he wasn’t making any headway at all.

“Try to walk.” The voice was growing more insistent.

“Do or do not, there is no try,” he snapped. At this point, he was just struggling to stay upright.

He was buried up to his waist when he saw her eyes: nearly overflowing with energy and determination. Not the ones he had seen on Tatooine, but the ones from that long-ago holoimage.

Emerging from out of the blinding winds, Shmi Skywalker walked towards him. Her feet stayed on top of the sand as though it were solid rock.

“He will bury you,” she said, grabbing hold of Nejaa’s shoulders and pushing him down beneath the surface.

The sand that filled his mouth drowned out his screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent my Christmas vacation working on a couple of side projects, including a cute “how they met” story for Nejaa/Scerra/Rostek called _Where the Spinning World Sleeps on its Axis_. It gives a little more background to some of the stuff about the Avend case, Rostek and Scerra’s relationship before Nejaa showed up, and confirms that Nejaa has _always_ been a human disaster.
> 
> If you’re like “yeah, but Cat, I just really want to feel Sad right now,” well, I wrote another story for that OT3 set in Legends continuity (aka not the _Speed and Peril_ AU unless things go horribly wrong and Vader and the Empire happen anyway) called _The Reasons I Can’t Let You Go_. If you’ve read _I, Jedi_ , you’ll recognize the opening scene from the section of the novel when Corran goes back to Corellia to visit Rostek. And then I milk that tragedy for all that it’s worth, hooray.
> 
> It’s likely that I’ll end up writing more little side stories set in this AU (or adjacent to this AU), so if you’re interested I’d recommend bookmarking or subscribing to the _A Word Here, An Act There_ series as a whole.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has read/kudosed/commented so far! I hope you also enjoy what comes next… whatever that ends up being. Unlike most of my other stuff, I haven’t planned this out more than a few chapters in advance, so who knows what’s going to happen? Certainly not me.
> 
> Links:  
>  _A Word Here, An Act There_ (series) - https://archiveofourown.org/series/1223621  
>  _Where the Spinning World Sleeps on its Axis_ (prequel to this fic) - https://archiveofourown.org/works/17259293  
>  _The Reasons I Can’t Let You Go_ (weaponized sadness, Legends canon) - https://archiveofourown.org/works/17098457


	18. How Free Kids Live

Anakin lay awake, staring at the ceiling of Valin's bedroom. They had set up a cot for him to sleep on; apparently Master Halcyon's son had friends over to spend the night occasionally, so it hadn't been all that difficult to arrange.

Not that difficult for the adults, at least. Valin didn't appreciate the company at all.

“I hope you showered, I don't want sand all over my stuff,” was all the boy said to him before flinging himself onto his own bed and turning out the lights.

“I did shower,” Anakin muttered and then fumbled his way to his cot in the dark. He had showered on the ship before arriving on Naboo.

He didn't have anything with him other than the Jedi robes he was wearing, which weren't the most comfortable things to sleep in but he didn't have much choice. It wasn't bad, just annoying.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Anakin could pick out more details of the room, which was full of _things:_ datacards, toys, posters on the walls, bits and pieces of clothing on the floor and draped over a chair, a small desk covered in scraps of flimsi and a datapad and a half-finished circuit kit of some kind.

 _This is how free kids live,_ Anakin thought to himself.

He sometimes forgot that he was free now too; things with the Jedi were so different that it didn’t cross his mind very often. Back on Tatooine, though, there was always a contrast: free kids had things, _owned_ things, went wherever they wanted to go, said anything they wanted to say, and never had to worry about trackers or masters.

And they hated slave kids. Not viciously, unless they were bullies, and not personally, but hated them all the same. They made sure that there was a very clear line between themselves and the slave kids, a line that no one could cross without punishment.

The fact that it wasn’t personal made it both better and worse because it had nothing to do with anything that you had done, it was just because of what you were and what you represented: the bad future, the one where they were kidnapped or their parents fell behind on debts or they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some kids were born into slavery but all kids, slave and free, knew that it was still possible for someone to take away the freedom you had taken for granted for so many years. That was why the free kids maintained that invisible line: they knew it was possible for them to slip across it.

Anakin had heard of a few slave kids who had gotten their freedom, usually by somehow buying it with credits they weren’t supposed to have, but they were few and far between and typically didn’t stay in the places where they grew up. They would go somewhere else, somewhere no one knew that they had ever been anything other than free. They didn’t cross the invisible line so much as sneak across it, and when they were on the other side they hated slave kids too, even though they used to be one. Especially because they used to be one.

Anakin knew that Valin didn’t hate him because of that, but he still disliked Anakin because of what he represented rather than because of something that he did.

Anakin was the reason why Valin’s father had to go away. He was the reason why his father couldn’t train Valin anymore. Anakin was getting all of the things that Valin thought of as his; not only that, but Anakin had been allowed into the Order even though it was against the rules and Anakin realized that they wouldn’t have bent the rules for Valin. They wouldn’t have let him come to the Temple and they probably never would. His father had to keep him a secret and now his father was gone because of Anakin.

Anakin knew this and felt bad for him, but not badly enough that he wasn’t indignant about being hated for something that wasn’t his fault. And not badly enough that he was going to keep his mouth shut about it any longer.

“He misses you,” Anakin said into the silence of the bedroom. He could tell somehow through the Force that Valin wasn’t asleep. “He’s been trying all this time to come back here and he’s even gotten in trouble for it a couple of times.”

When Valin didn’t respond, he continued. “I mean it: he really misses you. You’re all he thinks about—he even called me by your name once on accident.”

“Great,” Valin said bitterly. “He’s getting us confused now.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Anakin protested.

“Then what _did_ you mean?” he demanded.

Anakin fought back a wave of anger. This wasn’t _fair._ “I mean that I’m not trying to take him away—I’ve got Obi-Wan, I never asked for another Master!”

“Well, lucky you, now you’ve got two of them.”

“I didn’t _want_ that!” Anakin was sitting up now and could see that Valin was upright too. “Nobody asked me! I didn’t get a say in it!”

Valin snorted. “Yeah, but at least you’re _there._ I don’t even get _that._ Do you have any idea what it’s like to be excluded from something like that? To just have to sit on the sidelines and _watch_ and know that you can’t ever have it?”

It took every ounce of self-control that Obi-Wan and his mother had taught him for Anakin to not fling himself at the older boy and punch him in the nose.

“Have you even _looked_ at yourself?” Anakin said. Instead of making him louder like it usually did, his anger had somehow made him quieter. So much of him was clenched up in fury right now: his jaw, his fists… his entire body, actually. “Your entire _life_ is you having things: you’ve got parents and a home and so much _stuff_ —who cares if you can’t go to Coruscant? I’d give up being a Jedi in a heartbeat if it meant that I could have grown up like this, if my mom could have lived in a place this nice, if I could have gone to school or something instead of spending all my time in a literal junkyard trying to piece enough things together so that I wouldn’t get hit that day.” He lay back down, suddenly more disgusted than angry. “You’re just some stupid free kid who doesn’t know how good he’s got it.”

“Free kid?” Valin’s tone was somewhere between angry and confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”

In a way, Anakin appreciated that Master Halcyon hadn’t told his son about what Anakin’s life was like before he came to the Jedi Order; on the other hand, it meant that Anakin had to explain it himself.

He didn’t like telling that story. He didn’t like having to start with that sentence: _I was a slave._

 _I’m not a slave. I’m a_ _person._

It had only been a few months since those days. Less than a year.

He didn’t want to talk about it, but it was either explain to Valin why he was an idiot or punch him in the face.

Maybe he could just explain how it ended.

“Jedi don’t go to Tatooine,” he began as he sat up again. “Nobody goes to Tatooine, not unless they don’t have any other choice. So I’d never seen one before. Their ship broke and they got stuck and needed help, so I helped them. And then, when it was over, they paid Watto and freed me. But before that…” He refused to say it, so he said it another way. “Before that, I wasn’t free. Neither was my mother.”

Valin was quiet for a few seconds, then swore quietly. “Papa didn’t tell me that part.”

“Good. It’s a dumb story.”

“It’s not dumb,” Valin said. “It just… sucks. It really sucks.”

“I _know_ that,” Anakin said irritably.

“I’m sorry. That I was an asshole, I mean.”

“You were,” Anakin agreed, “but you didn’t know. And now you do.”

“What happened to your mother?” Valin asked.

“She’s still there,” he said, his heart aching a little with how much he missed her. “She’s free now too, but she decided to stay and help the other people there. Help them escape and get off-planet.” Something hardened inside of him… not anger, but conviction. “One day I’m going to go back and get everyone out. I’m going to fix it and make sure that no one can do that to anyone ever again.”

“Cut up the Hutts,” Valin said approvingly. “Yeah, that sounds good. If I had a lightsaber, I’d help you do it.”

“I don’t have one either,” Anakin admitted.

“But you’re going to get one. Soon, I bet. Papa says he’s going to figure out a way to get me a crystal but I don’t know how he’s going to do that.” Some of the earlier frustration crept back into his voice. “When I saw you in those robes I really hated you.”

“That’s not _my_ fault—if you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the Council.”

“I already am,” Valin said quietly.

“Me too.” Anakin wasn’t quite sure when that had started; maybe it was as long ago as his first meeting with them, when they called him too old and too afraid and scolded him for missing his mother.

“I know I’m not supposed to be,” Valin admitted. “I mean, I know that it’s _okay_ to be angry but I just _keep_ being angry and I don’t know how to let it go… and then I just really want to hurt someone.”

“Like me.”

Valin sighed. “Yeah.”

“Because I’m here and they’re not.”

“Sometimes I want to go to Coruscant and tell them who I am and just get it _over with,_ but I know that if I do that they’ll probably kick Papa out of the Order.” He sighed again, still frustrated. “But I don’t even know what it’s like there. You and Obi-Wan are the first Jedi I’ve ever met other than him—what’s the rest of the Order even like?”

“Most of them are okay,” Anakin said, thinking of Obi-Wan and Luminara Unduli and Jocasta Nu. “A lot of what they say doesn’t make much sense, though—especially the Council.”

“And you’ve got to do what they say.”

“Your father doesn’t always do what they say,” Anakin pointed out.

To his surprise, Valin actually laughed. “I know. He does that here too with CorSec—Daddy’s always yelling at him about it. Well, not _really_ yelling, but being annoyed at him.”

“Does he do the thing where he walks around the city at night?” Anakin asked.

“Yeah! You should see the stuff he wears sometimes when he does it—Mama calls them his ‘hunting clothes.’ I sometimes get to go with him. It’s pretty exciting.”

Anakin thought back to the time Master Halcyon blew up a bunch of speeder bikes and then got shot. That had certainly been exciting. “Hey,” he said as it occurred to him, “can you do that energy absorption thing?”

“Can I do it? I’m _amazing_ at it. I keep begging Papa to let me try doing it with a stun baton but…” Valin trailed off. “But he’s not here.”

“He’s here now,” Anakin reminded him.

“Yeah.” He was silent for awhile. “You know, you’re probably the first person I’ve ever told about being angry at the Jedi.”

“You too,” Anakin said. “I’m angry a lot but I can’t let anyone see it—even Obi-Wan—or else I’d get in trouble.”

There was a terrible thought in the back of Anakin’s mind that he kept locked away because if he took it out and examined it for too long he worried he would never stop being angry. He was around Jedi all the time, no one _but_ Jedi every single day. If he told any of the other kids they wouldn’t understand, and if he told any of the adults they wouldn’t like it. Or they would tell him that it wasn’t true.

Anakin didn’t want to think it was true either because he really liked Qui-Gon and missed him a lot and was grateful to him for coming to Tatooine and changing his life. So he didn’t want it to be true but he _knew_ that it was true:

“If I hadn’t been able to use the Force, they would have left me on Tatooine,” he said, realizing only a fraction of a second too late that he had said it out loud.

There was another part, one that he didn’t know if it was true or not, and it was so much worse than the first part that Anakin had to tell himself over and over that it couldn’t be true: “They might not have even tried to free me.”

It was all he had to offer: through some weird quirk or luck or something, he could use the Force and that was the only thing that the Jedi Order cared about. They didn’t care about his mother, not until Obi-Wan and Master Halcyon forced them to do something to help her. They didn’t care about anyone on Tatooine. They didn’t even care about a lot of the people on Coruscant, the ones that he saw when he and Master Halcyon went for walks at night.

Maybe the whole Order was just a bunch of free people who didn’t know how good they had it.

The two boys were quiet for what felt like a long time.

Valin was the one who finally broke the silence: “Daddy told me once,” he said slowly, “about how when he first met Papa, there were some bad people working for CorSec, and a bunch of other people who didn’t care that things were going wrong. Mama overheard him saying that and she said that they were really awful to Daddy and her and Papa back then. So I asked Daddy why he still worked there, and he said that he stayed at CorSec because he knew that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t like how the others were acting, and that if he kept helping the people who were doing good things, eventually they were going to be the ones running things, not the bad people.” Anakin could hear the pride in his voice. “It’s working, too: he’s going to be Deputy Director soon, and a lot of the bad people are already gone.”

“Okay.” Anakin didn’t know what he was talking about, but he knew that he had to say _something._

“What I _mean_ ,” Valin said, realizing that he hadn’t gotten to the point, “is that if you’re feeling like this and I’m feeling like this, there are probably other people who aren’t happy with the Jedi Order too. And if we stick together, maybe we’ll be the ones in charge one day.”

That was a really good idea, Anakin realized. He tried to imagine himself sitting on the Council one day and making sure that kids like him and Valin didn’t get in trouble for stuff that they didn’t have any control over. He couldn’t _quite_ picture it, but it made him feel better.

He also realized that Valin had said “we,” and that made him feel better too, because it hadn’t occurred to Anakin before that he might not have to do this all on his own. He had Obi-Wan and Master Halcyon and Padmé and Kitster and his mother, and now he had Valin and the rest of his family as well.

Anakin was free and was finally beginning to understand how good he had it now too.


	19. Neither the First Nor the Last

Halcyon’s family had a spare room for him to sleep in, and Obi-Wan more or less fell unconscious the second his head hit the pillow. It wasn’t until he woke up the next morning that he fully noticed where he was: he was in a _house_. That might have been the strangest part of it.

No, Obi-Wan reflected, this was far from the strangest thing about the last few hours, but he couldn’t deny how odd it felt to be here. He had only lived in the Temple and any time he traveled he either slept on the ship or in some kind of temporary quarters.

This was someone’s home. There was nothing temporary about it.

For most of the galaxy, this was probably normal. Just not for a Jedi.

Maybe Obi-Wan himself was the strange part.

This was where Halcyon _lived_. This _was_ normal for him. This was why he had nearly short-circuited when the Council ordered him to stay on Coruscant. He had been willing to risk his Knighthood and defy everything he had ever been taught about attachments… for the sake of three people and a house.

Obi-Wan had no idea if it was worth it. He had a nagging suspicion, however, that the longer he was here, the more likely he would believe that it was.

He could understand, intellectually, the appeal: being away from the rest of the Order, it was only natural to want some company. Most popular culture in the Republic pushed the idea that romance and family were the only ways to have that kind of companionship long-term. Even Jedi weren’t immune to those social pressures… they were just supposed to be above those things.

No attachments. That was part of the Code. But everything here was created from attachments, and it kept colliding with Obi-Wan’s beliefs until he was almost dizzy.

What would it have been like to have lived like this, with people who were almost irrational with how much their lives were impacted by your presence? Who went so far as to say that they needed you? To have met someone and decided to—

_(Strands of pale hair coming loose from where she had clipped it in place. An exasperated glare melting away into a smile, bringing a star’s worth of light into the bluest eyes he had ever seen…)_

Don’t think about that, he ordered himself. That was in the past. He had done what he was supposed to do and let it go. No attachments. The Jedi were above those things.

He tried to tell himself that he left the room because he had no reason to remain in it now that he was awake. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t because he needed to escape those thoughts and close the door behind him.

Scerra was the only other person awake: she was sitting at a desk covered in datacards and sheets of flimsi, with just enough room for her computer's display.

“Oh good, you're up,” she said as he walked into the house's main living area. She turned away from the display to look at him directly. “Nejaa's going to owe me twenty credits.”

“For what?”

_(This is his house. This is his_ _wife_ _.)_

“He was sure that you were going to sleep for a week… or at least longer than Anakin. I had more faith in your training and general resilience.”

They were apparently placing bets on his response to stress. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or insulted. “I'm glad I could help?” was all he managed to say.

She laughed briefly, but her expression quickly sobered. “I understand it’s been a difficult couple of days. Nejaa didn’t tell us much, but enough for me to guess that heading back to Coruscant is going to be a little rough.”

The knot of dread that Obi-Wan had been carrying since they left Tatooine reasserted its presence in his stomach. He was going to have to go back to the Temple and pretend that nothing was wrong, pass by all the places that Qui-Gon liked best and pretend that he didn’t know who ordered his murder, watch the news and look at the Senate Building and pretend that a horrible _creature_ hadn’t made its lair in the Chancellor’s office…

And, above all, make sure that Anakin didn’t find out. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure how that was going to work: Anakin was already a perceptive child when they first met and he was only getting better at figuring things out as time went on. Given his immense power in the Force and the amount of time that they spent together, Obi-Wan realized that there might eventually come a day when he wouldn’t be _able_ to keep secrets from his Padawan.

“So,” Scerra continued, apparently aware that Obi-Wan was beginning to retreat inside his head again, “while you’re here, there are three words that I need you to keep in mind.” She ticked them off on her fingers: “Take. A. _Break_.”

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, confused.

“I’m going to hazard a guess—and I’m rarely wrong about these things—that you’ve been stuck being the adult in the room quite a bit lately. Am I right?” Before Obi-Wan could answer, she nodded as if he had. “It’s one of Nejaa’s more irritating shortcomings: he tends to act like a brat if he thinks someone else will take over as the more mature one.” She shook her head in fond exasperation. “But here, you do _not_ have to be the adult. In fact, please _refrain_ from being the adult.”

“I have to make sure that Anakin—”

“Anakin will be fine,” she reassured him. “We already have one Force-sensitive kid running around here and we have more than enough room for another one. I’m working from home today—hence all of this—” she gestured at the materials on her desk, “—and Valin’s old enough to keep himself _and_ Anakin occupied. I know they weren’t quite hitting it off yesterday, but I think once Valin gets past his anxieties and resentment they’ll find a way to get along. So take a day off, all right?”

Having already used his one and only available argument, Obi-Wan nodded.

Scerra smiled approvingly. “Good. Was the room all right? We don’t use it much, as it’s ostensibly Nejaa’s room and he obviously never sleeps there.” Seeing Obi-Wan’s confused expression, she elaborated: “As far as the Jedi Order and CorSec and… well, most people, really… are aware, Nejaa Halcyon is nothing more than a Jedi liaison to the Corellian Security Force who accepted his colleague’s generous offer of long-term accommodations.” There was no hiding the bitterness in her tone. “Our husband is a _guest_ in his own home.”

Something about that hit Obi-Wan like a kick to the gut. “How long—”

“Thirteen years,” she said. “Well, twelve since we moved in together. It was easier to hide before Valin was born, of course—he has friends over and there’s really no way to disguise the fact that he looks an awful lot like Nejaa—but fortunately anyone who does suspect is content with pretending that they don’t know.” She pressed her lips together into a frown. “It sounds like we’re going to have to be more careful now, though.”

A fresh wave of dread washed over Obi-Wan. It wasn’t just about keeping his family a secret from the Jedi anymore: Halcyon now had to worry about the Chancellor finding out as well.

And he had come back to Corellia anyway, in spite of the risks.

This was what attachment led to. This was what happened when you broke the rules of the Code. These things only brought more danger, new kinds of danger—

_(“You seem to have a knack for discovering new kinds of danger, your highness.”_

_“Funny: I was about to say the same thing about you…”)_

Stop thinking about that. It’s over. She—them—what _happened_ —or didn’t happen—was in the past.

Apparently leaving the bedroom hadn’t helped.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say.

She shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help—” he started to offer, but Scerra interrupted him again.

“You forgot the three words, I see,” she said, her dark eyes dancing with amusement. “Now shoo; there’s food in the kitchen.”

* * *

Apparently whatever tension there had been between Anakin and Valin resolved itself at some point during the night, because the two boys were now talking excitedly in a manner that was almost conspiratorial. Obi-Wan overheard sentence fragments that seemed to be about circuitry, which was never really a topic that he found all that interesting in spite of Anakin’s obvious enthusiasm for it. Obi-Wan had tried his best but was glad to hear that Anakin had found someone who shared that interest.

Valin had even gone so far as to lend Anakin some clothes, meaning that this was the first time since Anakin joined the Order that Obi-Wan had seen him in anything other than Jedi robes. Combined with Halcyon’s own clothes, which were no longer robes either, Obi-Wan started to feel like he had slipped into a strange parallel universe where the Jedi had never existed. At one point or another, Rostek, Scerra, and Halcyon all individually offered to find Obi-Wan a change of clothes as well, but he turned them down. His robes were really the only thing that felt normal right now, and he refused to let go of the one anchor he had to his everyday life.

Soon, Rostek left for work and Halcyon took Valin with him on some kind of trip that was apparently part errand and part father/son bonding (a phrase that also made Obi-Wan feel like the gravity in the room had gone a bit awry), leaving him alone with Anakin. It was honestly something of a relief, since everything here had been so loud and confusing that he was looking forward to doing something familiar like instructing his Padawan, but Anakin unexpectedly objected.

“I’m _reading,_ ” he said, gesturing at the datapad he had been poring over since Halcyon and his son _(his son?_ ) had left the house _(his house???)._

That was not a sentence that Obi-Wan had ever expected to hear Anakin say. “What are you reading?” he asked.

“Valin lent me some books about swoop racing,” Anakin said with a shrug. “Did you know that a _Sith Lord_ once won the season opener on Taris?”

“Oh?” Obi-Wan slammed several mental doors in his mind and hoped desperately that Anakin didn’t notice how startled he was when he heard the word ‘Sith.’

Anakin didn’t even look up from the datapad. “I mean, it was thousands of years ago back when there were still Sith around, but still. Weird, right?”

“Very odd, yes,” Obi-Wan agreed faintly. Anakin resumed reading and ignored him.

He supposed that he should take a break… somehow. Or possibly a nap.

* * *

Eventually, everyone returned home and the volume of both noise and activity increased to its former levels.

Still drifting around the house in a daze, Obi-Wan was finally waylaid in the kitchen by Rostek after dinner was over.

“Sit,” Rostek ordered him gently as he gestured at the kitchen table. “Take a break.”

Those words again. Obi-Wan sat down, feeling a little awkward. He should really find out what Anakin was up to right now.

“The boys are off with Nejaa,” Rostek continued, as though he had somehow heard what Obi-Wan was thinking. “Though what they're up to, I have no idea.”

With Halcyon, Obi-Wan thought, that could be anything from meditation to a shockball tournament.

“I know that look,” Rostek said as he moved around the kitchen. “The last thirteen years of my life have _been_ that look.”

“What look?”

Rostek set two glasses and a bottle of dark liquid down on the table. “The look of _‘I have just spent twelve straight hours around Nejaa and am seriously considering throwing him out of a window except that I have a very strong suspicion that he would find the experience fun.’_ That look.” He opened the bottle. “And when I meet a kindred spirit like that, I offer them a drink.”

Obi-Wan eyed the bottle warily. “What is it?”

“Whyren’s Reserve. The best whiskey on Corellia, if not the galaxy at large. Would you like some?” He picked up one of the glasses. “I won’t pressure you, but you really do look like you could use a drink.”

Obi-Wan sighed and nodded. He might as well; this entire trip had been so much of a mess that he might as well add inebriation to the list of things he wasn’t going to tell the Jedi Order when they returned to Coruscant.

It wasn’t against the rules, it was just… unseemly, at least in Obi-Wan’s opinion. There was too much of a risk of letting something slip, or just embarrassing oneself.

He took a sip from the glass Rostek handed him. He didn’t _dislike_ it but beyond that he had no idea what he thought about whiskey.

“I imagine you have some questions,” Rostek prompted.

He had nothing _but_ questions. “…how?” was all Obi-Wan could manage.

“Well, that one is straightforward enough to answer: we met—well, I arrested him, actually—he proceeded to bother the hell out of me while being obnoxiously flirtatious at the same time, I introduced him to Scerra—who I had been friends with since childhood—and then the three of us sort of tumbled into bed together and built a relationship in the aftermath.” He took a sip of his drink. “I won’t lie: the first few months were difficult. This was all new ground for Nejaa: he was doing things that the Order had forbidden and he was trying to figure out how to have romantic partners in the midst of it. We knew that if this was going to continue we would have to keep some of it hidden—and, let me tell you, that is a lot of stress to put on any relationship—but it was worth it.” He smiled. “It still is, in fact.”

_Worth it._ Obi-Wan was still trying to wrap his head around that part. “I don’t understand why he stayed with the Order,” he admitted.

“He didn’t think that he should have to choose. As I'm sure you've noticed, if Nejaa can find a third option in any situation, he tends to take it.” Rostek took another sip. “I’ll admit that I don’t know much about the Jedi Code other than what I’ve overheard him teaching Valin, but I know that there are more important things in it than how and who you love. Being in love, getting married… it changes who you are as a person, but usually—if you're doing it right, at least—for the better. Nejaa once told me that he believed being a Jedi made him a better husband and father, and that being a husband and father made him a better Jedi. And I believe him.”

“It's just…” Obi-Wan tried to come up with an adequate statement. _It's just wrong_ , he almost said.

But what made it wrong? Attachments clouded a Jedi's judgment, clouded their connection with the Force and the Order and their duties. They were dangerous. “It's just such a _risk_ ,” he said.

Rostek laughed a little at that; but kindly, the way that Qui-Gon used to. “When has Nejaa ever avoided risky situations? Or any Jedi, as far as I've heard. I don’t think he’s the first to have done something like this,” he said, “and I doubt that he’ll be the last.”

Obi-Wan found himself squirming uncomfortably as he tried and failed to not think about the incident on Draboon, during that year he spent protecting the Duchess, facing down danger after danger while on the run from bounty hunters and assassins, perils so frequent that they all blurred together.

That particular time the danger had been sudden, too sudden, and the fear hit him like a blow to the chest and he reacted without thinking: he grabbed her in his arms and bolted for higher ground as the venom-mites started to swarm. They were safe for the moment, there was nothing to be afraid of, but his heart wouldn’t stop pounding in his chest, the same chest that she was pressed against because he was still carrying her. It was as though he had forgotten how to put her down, so he just stood there, frozen, looking down into her face as she looked up into his; both of them forgetting what they were supposed to be doing, forgetting their recent brush with danger, forgetting everything but the fact that she was still in his arms and their faces were so close and—

—and then he panicked and dropped her.

That had rather “killed the moment,” as they say in the holodramas. She suffered a nasty gash on one of the rocks and was a bit testy with him for the next few days. The moment was soon forgotten.

The rest wasn’t worth thinking about, he insisted to himself. He had let it go years ago, when things were resolved on Mandalore and he recommitted himself to the Order. It was in the past.

But if she had asked him…

He didn’t want to compare that situation with Halcyon’s, but he couldn’t help it, because Obi-Wan _did_ have a moment when he was faced with a choice and he chose to return to the Jedi Order. When faced with a similar choice, Halcyon had chosen differently, yet he still considered himself a Jedi and had apparently never even entertained the notion that he would have to leave the Order. The tension of his double life did seem painful at times, but he still acted like it was worth it.

Maybe it was.

Obi-Wan then realized that Rostek was still looking at him and that his expression was a little more knowing than Obi-Wan was entirely comfortable with. Had Obi-Wan really been that obvious?

“I know that look too,” Rostek said mildly, refilling Obi-Wan's now-empty glass. “As I said: I doubt he’ll be the last.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Update: 5/20/2019) And we're back! Sorry for the hiatus: I got stuck on a chapter and then massively distracted with other things. I had planned to wait until I had a batch of three chapters to release, but it's really been so long that I'm just going to post one at a time until I build up another buffer.
> 
> Anyway...
> 
> Anakin: Cinnamon Roll  
> \- too good  
> \- too pure  
> \- so smol
> 
> Obi-Wan: Slightly Burned Cinnamon Roll  
> \- needs a hug  
> \- needs a nap  
> \- crying his best
> 
> Nejaa: Jelly Doughnut  
> \- too much sugar  
> \- how did you even get here  
> \- the fuck


End file.
